ACT UP! delivers an innovative theatre-based educational methodology for promoting active citizenship among student in urban climate politics.
In this context, ‘active citizenship’ is less about citizenship as a formal legal status and more about social, political and cultural practices that are learned and exercised, involving forming new subjectivities and becoming claimants of environmental justice, rights and responsibilities.
The project is motivated by the conviction that European political life urgently needs new practical knowledge and tools to strengthen active citizenship among young people in urban arenas. Two interrelated societal developments demonstrate the urgency of this issue: 1) increasing climate anxiety, feelings of powerlessness, and dissatisfaction with government responses, in younger generations across the world; 2) increasing exclusion and polarisation in climate change politics, discourses and activism, in particular in the European setting.
In response, ACT UP! critically explores how citizenship can be 'performed' in new ways focusing specifically on urban space as a site for democratic expression and negotiation of common values. In doing so, the project aims to fostering a sense of common values and common humanity while negotiating the many different perspectives, values, interests and tensions that condition the fight against climate change in different urban arenas.
ACT UP! develops and implements the ACT UP! methodology through comparative case studies, educational exchange of teachers and students, and the development and implementation of theatre-based urban interventions in the cities of Groningen, Viljandi, Narva, Oslo and Cape Town.
Combining perspectives and experiences from the global north and south, ACT UP! addresses the need for HE institutions to be actively engaged in urban climate politics by enabling transdisciplinary collaboration and exchange across the complementary disciplines, institutional settings, and very different societal contexts represented by the consortium.
Through the development of new embodied knowledge and perspectives, and tools for successfully implementing these knowledges and perspectives in various geographical contexts, the project contributes to the ability of HE to take a leading role in developing a more robust civic response to the challenges of climate change.
