Ecotranslation, Artvocacy and Care. A Creative Response to Climate Change Communication

Climate change is a planetary crisis, which – among many other societal aspects – involves communication and, in particular, environmental communication. Despite the multiple efforts made to improve its quality and dynamics, environmental communication is defective, highlighting the need to tackle its flaws ethically and, specifically, 'care-fully'. Drawing on my 2022-2023 Arts Council England project, '12 Stories for 12 Days of COP27', the article reflects on the value of translation – or ecotranslation – as a communicative practice grounded in material and care-full work. The potential of art to facilitate communication between climate change experts, educators, health professionals, creative writers and lay publics and foster climate action and possibly activism among the latter was demonstrated through workshops with artists who translated the stories into prints. The aim of this article is to gain insight into the interconnections between translation and artmaking and the role that these interconnections play in effective ethical communication and advocacy or ARTvocacy (Hunter-Doniger 2020). Reflections on my care-full organization of the project, embedded within a wider international project run by the University of Exeter, are followed by the analysis of creative responses to fictional stories and, more broadly, climate change communication. The article makes use of a combination of approaches from Environmental Communication, Translation Studies and Ecofeminism to unveil not only the value of the project as advocacy but also the need to care and foster care-full work to respond to the climate crisis.