Narrative (Sweden)

This article documents stories of the East Phillips community of Minneapolis, Minnesota, US, in their ongoing struggle for environmental justice and resilience in the face of historic redlining, industrial zoning, and cumulative pollution. Drawing from community-engaged storytelling, art, and collective organizing, the Resilient Landscapes for Re-Imagined Futures project illustrates how residents have resisted harmful development while envisioning healthier, sustainable futures, including proposals for transforming the Roof Depot site, a large former industrial roofing warehouse, into a community-driven space for urban agriculture, environmental healing, and long-term neighborhood resilience. The integration of intergenerational voices and creative practices demonstrates the power of arts-based approaches in fostering social cohesion, amplifying marginalized perspectives, and mobilizing collective action. By situating East Phillips within broader frameworks of environmental justice and planetary health, the article highlights how local movements can contribute to systemic change.

Abstract Life Story Work is a fundamental in children’s state care. It is a process of helping children make sense of their experiences to promote their well-being. As society increasingly uses online repositories to store digital artefacts, interest in commissioning Digital Life Story Work (DLSW) platforms grows. However, why, how, when, for whom, and in what circumstances such platforms may help support children with experience of living in state care is unknown. Addressing this gap, we report on the first widespread rollout of a DLSW platform across one English Local Authority. Utilizing a participatory realist evaluation approach, we collected data from 119 participants and involved peer-researchers throughout. This article presents our final programme theory. This illustrates that DLSW is more likely to be optimal when it is: flexible and person-centred; provides future storytelling prompts; starts early; begins in the present; involves children, and constantly offers participation choices; records all aspects of everyday experiences and; when appropriate training and support is available. Findings provide key considerations for commissioners and implementers and begin to build a picture of how DLSW platforms may become embedded in supporting children with experience of living in state care.

The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Exercise Division (NED) leads the nation in validating the capabilities of the whole community in support of the National Preparedness System. In response to the increased threat of climate change, the NED has developed new resources to help communities increase preparedness for severe weather and natural disasters in the long term. This paper provides an overview of two such resources to help communities identify and prepare for climate-related events: the Long-Term Community Resilience Exercise Resource Guide (ERG) and the Climate Adaptation Exercise Series (CAES). These resources help communities develop and conduct exercises to increase their climate literacy, develop climate adaptation and mitigation plans, and leverage data on future climate conditions to inform decision-making. Exercises provide an opportunity for communities to build resilience by discussing and better understanding climate change and to plan for, adapt to, and mitigate the associated risks and hazards. The ERG provides guidance, tools and resources, and the CAES provides a consistent framework that FEMA regions can tailor to address unique, region-specific climate concerns. The results collected from these exercises, in turn, identify strengths to leverage and areas to improve, informing plans of action for a path forward for the next 20, 30 and 50 years.

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This paper reports a tabletop role-playing campaign developed in a child protection counselling context. The campaign was written by 12-year-old “Oliver” (a pseudonym) in collaboration with his counsellor and then played through with members of his family. The paper provides the background to the study, incorporating the theoretical context, tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs), narrative play therapy, and the position of the counsellor as both a co-creator and dungeon master. It outlines the collaborative process of creating a TTRPG campaign, and then as the primary intention, presents a faithful retelling of the campaign undertaken. The paper further provides clinical reflection on symbolism evident in TTRPGs and the campaign presented. Finally, it presents therapeutic outcomes to highlight the impact of this intervention and support the role of TTRPGs in a therapeutic context. The campaign investigates themes of displacement from home, siblings working together to overcome obstacles, exploring dungeons, overthrowing evil scientists, retrieving lost possessions, and, ultimately, returning home.

In this study, we discuss Port of Mars, a new experimental design to study collective action problems in extreme environments under conditions of high uncertainty. The game is situated in the first-generation habitat on Mars, providing an engaging narrative for players to navigate collective action problems. This pilot study finds that most groups are able to avoid the collapse of the habitat, and that the existence of thresholds seems to make groups cooperative. The game demonstrates the initial outcomes of a transdisciplinary project that could provide new ways to study commons governance under high uncertainty.

We present an inverse design tool for fabric formwork - a process where flat panels are sewn together to form a fabric container for casting a plaster sculpture. Compared to 3D printing techniques, the benefit of fabric formwork is its properties of low-cost and easy transport. The process of fabric formwork is akin to molding and casting but having a soft boundary. Deformation of the fabric container is governed by force equilibrium between the pressure forces from liquid fill and tension in the stretched fabric. The final result of fabrication depends on the shapes of the flat panels, the fabrication orientation and the placement of external supports. Our computational framework generates optimized flat panels and fabrication orientation with reference to a target shape, and determines effective locations for external supports. We demonstrate the function of this design tool on a variety of models with different shapes and topology. Physical fabrication is also demonstrated to validate our approach.