SASUF Sustainability Forum 2024

Storytelling for sustainability
The purpose of the workshop is to explore new concepts for understanding sustainability and new methods teaching sustainability in the classroom using storytelling as an inspirations. The workshop addresses different challenges. While education is emphasized as important for enabling sustainability transitions, there is still a huge challenge concerning developing methods that can better overcome the gap between education and practice. Second, while the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) have mobilized attention for managing for sustainability, the balance between economy, society and environment is being questioned as a framework for management for sustainability. A need for an alternative strong sustainability approach that is more holistic, pervasive and embedded in nature is increasingly being voiced. We suggest that storytelling can help addressing these challenges. New research on storytelling emphasize how stories are always made from landscapes and spaces and moves with the rhythms of life, not just human lives. Second, storytelling implies grounding theories and models in people’s lived experiences as well as in collective storymaking. Working with stories entails compassion, care and curiosity as well it entails an awareness of interdependence as well as responsibility. Through storytelling, students can potentially learn how to combine community building and social justice with sustainability. These topics are highly relevant in both the South African and Swedish context. The problems and their political relevance are different. Still there is an important need to look at social justice and sustainability as interconnected. The question concerning how we combine human rights with rights of ecology is important in this respects. The workshop will be organized as a participatory storytelling workshop facilitated through short presentations of how sustainability and social justice can be combined through storytelling in three different educational contexts.

Management education for dealing with societal challenges at Malmö University (MaU).
Management education for sustainability at University of Johannesburg (UJ).
Education for sustainability and social justice centered at the research network at the University of Mpumalanga (UM).

This will be followed by exercises in collaborative storytelling. The workshop is part of emerging collaboration where researchers from two of the institutions (MaU and UJ) have been visiting each other for the purpose of creating long term collaboration. A Memorandum of Understanding is being signed. Between the Swedish main applicant and the research network at UM, there has been collaboration since 2010. The collaboration between the Swedish main applicant and the researchers from the two South African universities have been in relation to PhD assessment, research workshops and conferences. This collaboration is being strengthened and there are plans of strengthening and extending the collaboration in the areas of sustainability and social justice and with a focus on power, ethics, education and learning.

Description of the context of the workshops.
What are the different contexts for problems concerning sustainability and social justice
Three 5-10 minutes presentations.
Colloborative storytelling for sustainability and social justice. How can we create new concepts for combining sustainability issues with social justice. How do we perceive these problems in the different contexts.
How can education contribute to addressing these solutions. How can we use storytelling to mobilize awareness and responsibility?
How can we train care, compassion and curiosity through using stories.
How can we storytelling to anchor sustainability and social justice in practice.
What are the new concepts we can use.
Sharing stories for discussion and wrap-up.

Keywords: Storytelling, sustainability, social justice, concepts and methods for education.