Can Ecological Storytelling Transform How We Perceive the Living World?

applied research for wimblu magazine

This 2026, I will be collaborating with Wimblu Magazine on their program Nature Telling Stories. Together with Alessandra Baltodano — documentarist and anthropologist —, I will be evaluating and researching the learning outcomes and transformational results of this powerful workshop on ecological storytelling. We are particularly interested in understanding how creative and reflective practices can shift the ways people perceive and relate to the more-than-human world.

The workshop will be offered in Spanish and English, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in exploring new perspectives on storytelling in times of ecological crisis. More information will be available soon here.

We have grown accustomed to telling and consuming stories about nature, positioning ourselves outside of — and often above — the story itself. This workshop explores how this dominant way of narrating nature and the socio-ecological crisis shapes our ability to engage deeply and critically with the challenges of our time. It can also limit our capacity to develop meaningful relationships with ourselves, with others, and with the more-than-human world.

In response, the workshop offers both theoretical perspectives and practical tools for creating stories that emphasize agency, interconnection, and the vitality of the more-than-human world, while cultivating nuanced and intersectional understandings of our complex ecosocial context.

Through creative nonfiction — a form that begins from reality but allows us to explore it through subjectivity and imagination — participants are invited to approach the world from a place of curiosity and contemplation. This orientation opens new possibilities for storytelling and for relating differently to other beings, landscapes, and to ourselves.

Ultimately, the workshop aims to contribute to the creation of a media landscape that offers both storytellers and audiences safe spaces to critically and creatively engage with contemporary ecosocial issues, while fostering meaningful connections with both our inner and outer landscapes.