Quinn MacAskill wants people in the Tantramar region to dream big and use their imaginations.
“We’re at a time when we really need our imaginations more than ever,” says the student and community organizer, “because if we want a different future than the one that we’re headed towards, which I think most people do, then we need to imagine a different possibility.”
MacAskill is home in Sackville after her first year in the Environment, Sustainability and Society program at Dalhousie University. In cooperation with EOS Eco-Energy, she is hosting two Climate Imagination Sessions this month, in Dorchester on July 31 and Sackville on August 14 (rescheduled from August 10).
CHMA spoke with MacAskill last week to find out more:
The sessions will start off with a brief presentation from MacAskill, “to make sure everyone’s on the same page about the climate emergency, knows what the impacts are going to be globally and locally, [and to] give people some ideas for some frameworks that they could use to think about a sustainable future.”
And then, says MacAskill, “I’m just going to turn it over to people, give them the opportunity to just use their imaginations, dream big, brainstorm.”
MacAskill says that for this session, there are “no real limits or boundaries” to the ideas and vision that people can bring to the table. “At this point, we’re just imagining what the future of Tantramar could be.”
MacAskill acknowledges that the climate crisis is “often framed as kind of an insurmountable problem,” which can lead to anxiety and despair. “But I’ve always thought that we can also view this as an opportunity. Because if we’re going to have to transform all of our systems, then we might as well take this opportunity to solve lots of different problems at once, to tackle inequality, social justice, as well as environmental issues.”
“A lot of people’s first instinct is to kind of think realistically about the problem,” says MacAskill, “and try to come up with barriers that might prevent you from actually doing things… That’s not the purpose of these sessions. The goal is really to just leave all of those limitations behind.”
“We don’t really know what the world is going to look like a few years from now,” says MacAskill. “So let’s imagine that it looks good, and that it looks sustainable, and equitable… and a community that everyone would want to live in.”
MacAskill pitched the idea for the sessions at Mayor’s Roundtable on Climate Change meeting, and shortly thereafter EOS Eco Energy offered to partner with her to deliver the sessions.
In June, she ran a “mini-version” of the sessions at Marshview Middle School, where she collected over 400 ideas from grade six, seven, and eight students. Now she says the challenge is extended to all ages, and she’s hoping to attract a broad cross-section of residents. “We’ll see if the community is just as good as the students were at coming up with ideas,” says MacAskill.
After the sessions, MacAskill will write a summary report for Tantramar staff and council.
MacAskill has been environmental conscious from a very young age, and got involved with the Climate Strike movement when she was 13, helping Sackville youth demand action that resulted in a Sackville council climate crisis declaration in 2019, and the founding of the Mayor’s Roundtable on Climate Change.
“My message has always just been that we need urgent action,” says MacAskill. “And I want to make sure that we’re always thinking about this problem, because it really is the defining issue of our time. And it’s the one that’s going to impact all other issues as well.”
The first Climate Imagination session takes place Wednesday, July 31 from 6pm to 8pm at the Dorchester Moving Forward Cooperative at 8 Station Road, Dorchester. A second session is slated for Wednesday, August 14, from 6pm to 8pm at the Sackville Commons on Lorne Street in Sackville.
