Giving Voice to Environmental Health Through Community Arts

Purposes: The explicit purpose of this innovative academic-community project was to collaborate to raise the consciousness of a low income Hispanic community about needed environmental health and climate change action as well as environmental stewardship through a community-based arts project developed by at risk minority youth who attend an environmental health workshop.

Rationale: An increasing number of scholars argue that current approaches to reducing climate change, such as encouraging people to recycle are good but not sufficient in creating a new culture of environmental stewardship and sustainability. However, given the complexity of climate change, moving a community from a culture of consumption into a culture of sustainability presents challenges. What is known is that youth have always been among the main agents for significant local and global cultural changes, and it is unlikely that the needed change can be created without them.

Methods: We engaged Hispanic at-risk minority youth to attend a week-long environmental health and stewardship workshop called the EcoFilm Camp.  Information about climate change was given by interprofessional health science students in collaboration with a community-based organization, San Anto Cultural Arts whose mission is to foster human and community development through community-based arts. During the week-long workshop, San Anto staff taught and worked with the youth to develop their videography and writing skills in order to create community-based art that included public service announcements and newspaper articles to reflect their perceptions of environmental health and stewardship, including climate change.

Outcomes: Three public service announcements were created and shown to the community during a red carpet event at a local community theatre. The PSAs have since been posted on social media sites. In addition, pre and post test results demonstrate that there was a significant increase in knowledge about climate change among the youth.

Conclusions: The goal is to continue to increase capacity to engage with others to address community-specific negative impacts of climate change. Such capacity building initiatives are a first step toward decreasing community environmental health vulnerability.