An Atlas of Climate Imaginaries: A Two-Day Series on Community, Resilience, and Research
On 26–27 August 2026, a two-day series of activities in Barangay Inayawan and the University of the Philippines Cebu is bringing together community members, researchers, faculty, and students to explore how climate resilience can be understood, imagined, and represented through creative and participatory approaches.
The series forms part of the Mapping Climate Imaginaries in the Philippines: Exploring Alternative Futures beyond Techno-Fixes Project, led by Dr. Gemma Sou of Monash University in partnership with Dr. Justin See of the University of Melbourne and Dr. Weena Gera of the University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies (UP CIDS) Urban Studies Program-UP Cebu. The project is funded by the Australian National University (ANU) Philippines Institute Collaborative Research Grant with a counterpart from UP CIDS Urban Studies Program.
The series begins on 26 August with the launch of the Atlas sa mga Hinanduraw sa Klima (Atlas of Climate Imaginaries) at the Barangay Inayawan Annex Hall. The community exhibition brings together the ideas, hopes, memories, and visions of Inayawan residents for a safer and more resilient future amid climate change and typhoons.
Developed through drawings, conversations, interviews, and observation, the Atlas explores resilience beyond conventional infrastructure such as flood walls and evacuation centres. It highlights everyday dimensions of resilience, including secure livelihoods, housing, community, faith, and the environment. Here, drawing is central to the project as a creative research method. It provides residents with a space to express experiences, emotions, memories, and imagined futures that may be difficult to communicate through words alone. The drawings and accompanying stories offer valuable insights into how communities understand environmental change and imagine resilient futures.
On 27 August, the project continues at the University of the Philippines Cebu with the workshop Unsettling Disaster Representation with Creative Methods, facilitated by Dr. Gemma Sou and organized by the UP CIDS Urban Studies Program Cebu. The workshop brings together faculty members, researchers, and students to explore creative and participatory approaches to qualitative climate and disaster research.
Building on the Inayawan experience, the workshop examines how creative methods can challenge conventional representations of disasters and communities. Participants engage with approaches that foster collaboration, reflexivity, and meaningful community engagement while making visible forms of knowledge and experience often overlooked by conventional research methods.
Together, these activities connect community knowledge, creative practice, and academic research. The Atlas centres the voices and aspirations of Barangay Inayawan residents, while the workshop extends these methodological conversations into the academic community.
The project highlights a central principle of the Atlas of Climate Imaginaries: climate resilience is not only engineered through infrastructure. It is also imagined, practiced, negotiated, and created by communities themselves.