Voicing the Eco-Political Agencies of Children Through Participatory Creative Methods

青年气候活动家正受到媒体前所未有的关注。像格里塔·通伯格、杰米·马戈林和伊斯拉·希尔西这样的年轻人正在以越来越明显的方式对生态条件和未来做出反应，并面对这些环境和未来。然而，迫切需要补充我们对全球北方这些青年领袖的关注，以便更好地了解全球南方气候危机中儿童的政治机构。正如发展研究文献所确认的那样，与全球南方城市的儿童接触至关重要，他们每天都在谈判复杂的气候变化问题和压力。然而，正如最近在《儿童地理学》上所做的研究表明，儿童中介机构的方法应该包括关注儿童表达自我的多种方式，通常是非语言方式。为应对这些挑战，拟议项目制定了参与性方法，与全球南方城市居住的小学生接触，记录他们对当地环境和气候变化影响的关切和想法。更具体地说，我将通过以音乐和声音为特色的参与式方法，调查与气候变化有关的儿童机构。为此，我将在哥伦比亚的波哥大为7至11岁的儿童举办一系列音乐和声乐研讨会。在我作为伦敦小学生音乐讲习班和学习空间主持人的现有专业实践以及与拉丁美洲社区合作的经验的基础上，我将发展两种声波方法：第一，我将利用坎比亚音乐(一种起源于哥伦比亚的音乐流派)的历史和调性，作为一种手段，让儿童参与绘制故事以及环境和气候变化问题的地图；第二，我将促进声乐练习和即兴创作，鼓励儿童创造他们自己的沟通和交流空间。通过与波哥大的儿童接触，我可以通过教育接触获得空间和资源，这个项目将加深对儿童政治机构和当地环境问题的了解。它还将使全球南方继承的音乐和声音传统参与进来，同时偏离西方对儿童和气候变化的看法。该项目汇集了儿童地理、对全球南方政治机构的研究和参与性创作方法，将对有关气候危机中儿童政治主体性的文学作出重要贡献。

Youth climate activists are receiving unprecedented media attention. In increasingly visible ways, young people like Greta Thunberg, Jamie Margolin and Isra Hirsi are reacting to and confronting ecological conditions and futures. Yet there is an urgent need to complement our attention to these youth leaders in the Global North with better understanding of the political agency of children in the midst of the climate crisis in the Global South. As development studies literatures affirm, it is vital to engage with children in Global South cities who are negotiating complex climate change issues and pressures on a daily basis. However, as recent work in children's geographies suggests, approaches to children's agency should include attention to the multiple, often non-verbal modes in which children express themselves. The proposed project responds to these challenges by developing participatory methods to engage with Global South, urban-dwelling primary school children to document their concerns and ideas about local environments and the impact of climate change. More specifically, I will investigate children's agencies in relation to climate change through participatory methods featuring music and sound. I will do so by staging a series of musical and vocal workshops with seven to eleven-year-old children in Bogota, Colombia. Building on my existing professional practice as a facilitator of musical workshops and learning spaces for primary school children in London, as well as my experience working with communities in Latin America, I will evolve two sonic methods: first, I will employ the histories and tonalities of Cumbia music (a musical genre that originated in Colombia) as a means to involve children in mapping stories and issues of the environment and climate change; second, I will facilitate vocal exercises and improvisation sessions to encourage children to invent their own space of communication and exchange. By engaging with children in Bogota, where I have access to space and resources through educational contacts, this project will further understandings of children's political agencies and local environmental concerns. It will also engage inherited traditions of music and sound in the Global South, while decentring western perspectives on children and climate change. Bringing together children's geographies, studies of political agency in the Global South and participatory creative methods, this project will make an important contribution to literature on children's political subjectivities in the midst of the climate crisis.