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Empowering diverse voices through multilingual writing and innovative digital education.

The Nordic Multilingual Writing LAB project empowers older youth and adults with diverse backgrounds, supports educators working in multicultural environments, and promotes multilingual writing through the innovative use of digital education tools and technologies.

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Course Content
Week 1: INTRO
This week introduces mimesis as an ecological and affective method of representation. Rather than merely replicating nature, we engage with what Tom Bristow calls the "environmental humanities' poetics of relation" (Bristow, Living Lexicon), drawing from Lawrence Buell’s environmental imagination to explore how memory becomes an instrument of environmental continuity and care. Inspired by Fritjof Capra’s Principles of Life, mimesis is reframed here as an analog act—a poetic tool for transmitting both biological and emotional ecosystems across generations. We move away from linear history toward a web of living memory. Practices: • Nature journaling and oral history collection from elder relatives or community members. • Begin a Memory Lexicon based on intergenerational ecological recollections. • Workshop: “Where does my memory touch the land?” Exercise: Compose a poem or poetic map that interweaves ancestral land stories with personal sensory encounters. Highlight disappeared ecosystems or endangered places, and reflect on how poetic memory operates as a form of ecological resistance (Haraway, Staying with the Trouble). ‘M’imesis – imitation / representation Mimesis is an entirely holistic, analogue mode of communication in which “the world is apprehended as variation on continuous dimensions, rather than generated from discrete elements. It would be valuable for our natural history collections and cultural archives (owned, indexed and maintained by humans for humans) to sustain such an understanding and feeling of variation. Doing so would help us to recognize the complex ways in which human organisms and their environments are “mutually unfolded and enfolded structures” and are each recomposed in and through their exchanges. Moreover, our collecting institutions’ interpretative grids could be calibrated to the ways that “evolution demonstrates the mutability and malleability of biology as against its permanence. This approach would trigger environmental emotions, which could be harnessed by sensitive curation of the visitor experience.
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Week 1: Mimesis – Roots & Recollection Theme: Writing Ecological Memory / Intergenerational Land Stories
Week 1: Practice – Nature Journaling and Oral History Collection
Week 1 - Quiz
Protected: Ecology of Memory: Transgenerational Ecopoetics in Multimedia

Now let’s put it all to practice:

Remember that these are practices I recommend you start now and continue throughout our time together, but you can apply, modify, skip or add to as you see fit, depending on what material you have access to, so do not feel discouraged if any of these points do not “click” with you.

1. Nature Journaling and Oral History Collection:

o Choosing Subjects, Emotions, and Territory:

 Subjects: Select natural elements or phenomena that resonate with your personal or communal history. This could be a specific plant, animal, landscape, or weather pattern that holds significance.

Emotions: Reflect on the emotions associated with these subjects. Are there feelings of nostalgia, grief, joy, or reverence? How do these emotions connect to the broader ecological and cultural context?

 Territory: Identify the geographical locations that are tied to these subjects and emotions. This could be a family farm, a local park, a river, or any place that holds ecological and cultural importance.

o Nature Journaling: (An on-going practice through the course)

Document observations of the chosen subjects in their natural habitat. Note the sensory details—sights, sounds, smells, and textures.

Reflect on the emotions and memories associated with these observations. How do these experiences connect to the broader ecological and cultural context?

 Include sketches, photographs, and other visual elements to enrich the journal entries.

o Oral History Collection:

 Conduct interviews with elder relatives or community members to gather their stories and memories related to the chosen subjects and territories.
 Record these interviews, either in writing or using audio/video recording devices.
Transcribe and integrate these oral histories into your nature journals, creating a rich tapestry of intergenerational ecological memory.

o Integration and Reflection:

Reflect on the connections between the nature journaling and oral history collection. How do these practices inform and enrich each other?

Consider how these combined practices contribute to a deeper understanding of ecological memory and intergenerational land stories.

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