It was a good day of sharing stories and making sense out of them

It was really good day at Bokvilla!  Story Data Exchange created a space in the library where people could share stories, write them down on cards or make an audio recording of their stories.  These were then put into immediate action to study climate change.  Your stories are data, pertinent information needed to understand the past, present, and future of what is happening climatically.

From the data gathering station, we then moved to the data analyzing area.  As of now, we have received 82 pieces of data (stories).  Stephany started to sift through the data by year, which opened up space for participants to understand collectively how to analyze data and then make various hypothesis.  Each piece of data has a date on it, which helped better analyze the data.  No conclusion were made on that Sunday, but the conversations opened up a lot discussion about choices we make and how they impact society and the environment.  Also, conversations about memory and the possibility of skewing memories was very interesting.  The range of ages that participated strengthened the conversations even more so! 

Thank you to Andrew Steinmetz who helped with the objects and display and Stephany Mazon who was on site to offer information from a climate researcher's perspective and shared how to start making sense out of collected data.  Also, special thanks to Anna Voronkova who came as a participant, but was extremely proactive in getting cafe visitors to join Story Data Exchange.

I feel grateful for having been able to open up the space for discussions as important as climate change to happen in an active, reflective and creative way.  Making pulla (Finnish buns) for Story Data Exchange participants was also a plus : ).

We will continue to bring science and art together.  Stay tuned!

XOXO
arlene