About the River of Hope
The River of Hope film highlights the journey taken by youth as they participated in a creative, participatory action research project within their own communities. The innovative animation follows ‘Sa’, the storytelling Kingfisher who takes viewers along the Red Rive, Northern Vietnam to observe the youth in action highlighting the important role youth play within communities as they learn to live with a changing climate.
The project supported youth to develop the knowledge and skills they needed to understand climate change, its local impacts and to actively engage as social researchers. Equipped with this knowledge and understanding, youth set out to discover not just the challenges being experienced by their communities, but stories of action, those of mitigations and of adaption. The youth then turned these stories of ‘hope’ in action, into creative outputs that have become accessible resources that can support community resilience building.
The film was made in collaborative project with researchers from the University of Hull, The Central Institute for Natural Resources and Environmental Studies (CRES), Vietnam National University, Loughborough University and Newcastle University. The film was co-created between researchers, youth in Vietnam and with My Pockets an arts company. It highlights the work of the ‘Youth-led Adaption to Climate Change Challenges’ (YACC) project, funded by the British Academy’s Youth Futures Programme, supported under the UK Government's Global Challenges Research Fund.
Further funding from the British Academy’s Maximising Impact Scheme (funded by the UK's Department for Science, Innovation and Technology) is being used to extend the reach of this research and its impacts both within and beyond Vietnam across SouthEast Asia.
The project supported youth to develop the knowledge and skills they needed to understand climate change, its local impacts and to actively engage as social researchers. Equipped with this knowledge and understanding, youth set out to discover not just the challenges being experienced by their communities, but stories of action, those of mitigations and of adaption. The youth then turned these stories of ‘hope’ in action, into creative outputs that have become accessible resources that can support community resilience building.
The film was made in collaborative project with researchers from the University of Hull, The Central Institute for Natural Resources and Environmental Studies (CRES), Vietnam National University, Loughborough University and Newcastle University. The film was co-created between researchers, youth in Vietnam and with My Pockets an arts company. It highlights the work of the ‘Youth-led Adaption to Climate Change Challenges’ (YACC) project, funded by the British Academy’s Youth Futures Programme, supported under the UK Government's Global Challenges Research Fund.
Further funding from the British Academy’s Maximising Impact Scheme (funded by the UK's Department for Science, Innovation and Technology) is being used to extend the reach of this research and its impacts both within and beyond Vietnam across SouthEast Asia.
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Read more about the research and its approach below. Explore the website and find out more about the work we’re doing and look at our brand new YouTube channel showcasing all the youth’s creative outputs.
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Our Approach
The project was underpinned by the following four core principles that inform all of our wider work:
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Youth-led Adaption to Climate
Vietnam is regarded as one of the most at risk countries from the climate crisis, with the Red River catchment (RRC) in Northern Vietnam, one of the most “at risk” catchments globally. The RRC is densely populated, with ~30 million inhabitants and is central to the economy of Vietnam with a long history of agricultural production producing food for both Vietnam and SE Asia. Climate change is leading to a range of hydrological extremities in the area that put both the economy of Vietnam and the livelihoods and welfare of its people at risk.
Working with youth across three locations in the RRC, the project supported research capacity development which enabled youth to research ‘at risk’ local communities and investigate and capturing both the challenges faced as well as localised knowledge of, responses to and resilience against these challenges. |
This was a transdisciplinary project. It involved scaffolding social science research skills and education, alongside scientific ‘knowledge’ on climate change to support youth to capture and analyse diverse, local knowledge and build social capacity for a more sustainable future.
Youth were also supported to innovate and create arts-based outputs from their findings as a means to support localised knowledge exchange and enhance community resilience. The role of emotion, as both an inhibitor (fear, hopelessness, disempowerment) and as a facilitator (empathy, hope and a sense of efficacy) of climate action was also central to this work, shaping both our adoption of creative methods and the production of creative and arts-based knowledge-exchange outputs.
Youth were also supported to innovate and create arts-based outputs from their findings as a means to support localised knowledge exchange and enhance community resilience. The role of emotion, as both an inhibitor (fear, hopelessness, disempowerment) and as a facilitator (empathy, hope and a sense of efficacy) of climate action was also central to this work, shaping both our adoption of creative methods and the production of creative and arts-based knowledge-exchange outputs.
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In practice, bringing together these things looked as follows:
We have strong evidence that this approach worked to support community-based intergenerational dialogue and to support and inspire independent, intergenerational community-based climate action. We also witnessed the important role of creativity and storytelling in these processes. Read more about this under Projects – YACC. |
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Showcasing youth In December 2022, a showcase event was held in Hanoi at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology where a range of stakeholders including governmental and NGO policymakers and practitioners, educators, artists and the public were invited to hear about the project and celebrate youth’s achievements.
The successful event launched the creative outputs developed by the youth and also premiered the original water puppetry performance co-created between the youth, the research team, the Institute for Cultural Studies and the Đồng Ngư Water Puppetry Troupe. |
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You can watch a film all about the showcase event featuring the full version of the original water puppetry performance outputs on the website (or via our YouTube channel). You can also watch a short project video explaining more about what we did on the project. We also created a info-animation created to respond to community needs to understand the role of the electro dams including their benefits and potential challenges resulting from climate change and you can also view this to see how the project uses creativity to support community resilience building.
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Advancing Policy and Practice on Climate Action (APPOCA)
APPOCA - the follow-on project to advance and maximise impact from the YACC project, has three objectives. These objectives are:
- To enhance and extend opportunities for dialogue between youth and key policy-makers and practitioners focused on climate action at national and international level within Southeast Asia.
- To influence youth- and/or climate-focused policy-makers and practitioners to engage with approaches that include community-focused, intergenerational knowledge exchange
- To advocate for the role of creativity, storytelling and emotions in supporting and encouraging climate action
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In 2023, workshops have successfully taken place in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia sharing the work of the YACC project and working in partnership with youth. In Cambodia and Thailand, the workshops partnered with the first ever LCOYs in both countries. The approach and the four core principles were shared and discussed and collaboratively, leading youth climate changemakers in each context are working alongside researchers to develop policy briefs and resources to support others to adopt to similar approaches. |
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Read more about the work of APPOCA on the website and ‘contact us’ via the website or at [email protected] and/or [email protected] to join our mailing list. We are advancing this work under the umbrella of Younity4Action - an international collaborative space focusing on advancing transdisciplinary research committed to co-created and youth-led climate action (see website for more details).
