Exploring Intersectional Ideas of Resilience in Bristol Based Youth Climate Activism

There has been a significant increase in the number of young people taking part in climate activism in recent years, exemplified by the global Youth Strike for Climate movement. Bristol is a city renowned for activism, and its February 2020 strike is reported to have seen over 15,000 young people take to the streets to demand immediate action on climate change (Morris, 2020). This climate activism is occurring against a backdrop of an intensifying mental health crisis, of which eco-anxiety plays a significant role. Recent research by Hinkman et al (2021) indicates that 70% of 18 – 24 olds experience eco-anxiety and three in four young people feel frightened by the future. Resulting feelings of distress, powerlessness and burnout are impacting on their daily lives (Hinkman, 2020) and from this, the sustainability of the youth climate movement. COVID19, successive lockdowns and isolation from traditional spaces and networks of support such as schools, youth and friendship groups have compounded these issues (Bond, 2021), further risking the sustainability of the youth climate movement in relation to both activist burnout for some but – conversely - increased inaction for many (Stanley et al, 2021).
This project seeks to serve and empower YCAs and young people more broadly to prefigure their own resilient, intersectional futures in the face of the conjoined climate and mental health crises. We are committed to working with children and young people (particularly those of colour) to place their needs at the centre of the project we are interested in exploring, and to avoid the creation of top-down, paternalistic models of resilience developed by adults and ‘experts’, focussing instead on peer-to-peer, genealogically grounded structures of mutual aid, communality and collectivism. Central to this is our desire to explore with partners and YCAs an intersectional understanding of resilience which resists the neoliberal co-option and individualisation of wellbeing and resilience (Lamont et al, 2013; Joseph, 2013; Chandler and Reid, 2016).