Climate Disaster Project

Today is the start of the twenty-ninth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. World leaders are gathering in Baku, Azerbaijan to negotiate how to protect lives and livelihoods from the worsening impacts of climate change.

That’s why we’re honoured to have partnered with climate disaster survivors around the world and the to help make sure survivor voices are heard during those negotiations and the global news media’s coverage of them - to help make sure their experience and knowledge matters.

Between now and the conclusion of COP29, The Guardian will be publishing eight testimonies the Climate Disaster Project has co-created with survivors across five continents.

"It’s an innovative format for climate journalism, which is more comfortable in the realm of maps, charts, statistics and traditional narrative storytelling. By artfully recompiling survivors’ testimonies and weaving them together, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts," writes Jimmy Thomson, the managing editor of Canada's National Observer, about Neworld Theatre's Eyes of the Beast which just closed a week long performance at the Victoria's Phoenix Theatre. Follow this page for news about future performances of the play, based on the award-winning journalism of the Climate Disaster Project.

“A massive and monumentally important undertaking.” That’s how Times Colonist arts and entertainment reporter Mike Devlin describes Eyes of the Beast: Climate Disaster Survivor Stories, making it one of his critic’s picks for this week. There’s still time to see the play, which runs till Saturday at Victoria’s Phoenix Theatre and shares true life stories of loss and hope from British Columbia’s extreme heat, fires, and floods. Ticket are available at the box office or via at phone 250-721-8000.

The true-life stories of people coming together during British Columbia’s recent climate disasters are being brought to the stage by internationally-renowned Neworld Theatre.

Eyes of the Beast: Climate Disaster Survivor Stories is the first documentary theatre production based on frontline climate disaster reporting, following the lives of ordinary people impacted by the extraordinary heat waves, fires, and floods of 2021.

That award-winning, trauma-informed reporting was conducted by students participating in the Climate Disaster Project, a teaching newsroom works with disaster-impacted people to share their stories.

The show, which paints a portrait of a province under pressure from a warming planet, will have its world premiere at the University of Victoria's Phoenix Theatre from September 16-21.

Tickets are going fast so reserve yours now by following the link.

https://finearts.uvic.ca/theatre/mainstage/2024-2025-mainstage-season/eyes-of-the-beast/