NarChoFor - Children's Narrative Chorus of the Forest: More-than-human participative democracy through collaborative storytelling

Directed by 

Sabrina PARENT (ULB) 
 

Team member

Jade de COCK (ULB-iiTSE)

Project presentation

Gathering key local stakeholders as speakers, artists as facilitators and children as participant-storytellers, the project Children’s Narrative Chorus of the Forest tests the hypothesis that narrative builds collective agency by opening space for young voices—and the more-than-human world they engage with in their stories—to reshape how decisions about forest futures are made.

This project aims to investigate (1) the way children’s stories integrate the more-than-human and engage with transgenerational temporality (i.e. what insights it provides on socio-environmental issues); (2) the impact of the inclusion of children’s storied perspectives on local socio-environmental issues (i.e. how it influences public debates and adults’ positions in polarized conflicts); (3) the impact of children participation on eco-emotions (i.e. whether children’s storied participation in decision-making inspires socio-environmental agency); (4) the effects of collaborative storytelling as a communication method for participatory democracy (i.e. how it affects social cooperation and the exploration of dissensus). Due to growing interest in participatory democracy, yet the scarcity of spaces for shared learning through trial and error, an Aesthetic Laboratory for More-than-human Democracy (LabMoth) will be established in parallel. This will be an exchange and dissemination platform for facilitators working with experimental aesthetic dispositifs in more-than-human democracy. Due to growing interest in participatory democracy, yet the scarcity of spaces for shared learning through trial and error, an Aesthetic Laboratory for More-than-human Democracy will be established in parallel. This platform for facilitators working with experimental aesthetic dispositifs in more-than-human democracy will (5) bring our story-based methodology into dialogue with other art-based approaches and allow metareflexive analysis, (6) map, examine existing practices and disseminate effective methods. 
 

Events

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Funding

The NarChoFor research project is a 4-year research project (starting January 2026) funded by 

• F.R.S-FNRS-WelChange program (Project #40035545) 
• and ULB Research Department (FER 2026-2028). 

Main publications

• No information available yet