Eco-storytelling in the urban: a work-in-progress look at storytelling to reawaken ecological awareness in urban space

Western capitalist life has, arguably, disconnected many of us from an informed awareness of our physical environment: we are losing an understanding of the flora, fauna and geology with which we share our day-to-day space (Jordan-Baker 2019, Macfarlane 2017). A danger of this disconnection is that we lack direct experience of the urgency of ecological damage (Craig, on BBC Radio 4 30/9/21). This might be especially true of urban areas – which both distance us from visible non-human environments and might, as Benjamin and Weber argued, inherently leach “enchantment” from our sense of the world (Gilloch 1996, Weber 1965).

Professional storytellers have called eloquently for us to combat this disconnection and disenchantment through traditional oral tales: in-person, non-digital tellings of stories from rural or hunter-gatherer communities, to re-inspire appreciation and wonder at the growing environment (‘eco-storytelling’: Nanson 2021, 2011; Lupton 2007). As Nanson notes, however (2005), this work must also address the reality of urban life for those in built-up areas. As a storyteller and PhD researcher, I am probing this dilemma further: how far do rural stories re-connect us to a ‘natural’ environment that is itself physically distant? Can one re-enchant a 21st-century urban landscape with oral tales, and if so, does it matter if they come from a different time and space?

In this presentation I will outline my work thus far, and my plans for research in the (nominal, if not actual) field. In particular, I will discuss humanity’s in-built capacity for making stories (cf Peneff 1993, Macintyre 2011 [1981]): how we innately construct them out of lived experience, and project them onto even urban landscapes. Importantly, though, I will ask how far these urban tales can serve the needs of re-enchantment; looking in particular at ‘hauntology’s’ focus on the eerie, and existing work on ‘childlore’ and children’s imaginations of place.