Four Lines: Youth Storytelling Project honors the voices of four youth—Corvine, Anukalp, Wakinyela, and Kimimila—who share personal stories of climate change grounded in reflection, lived experience, and place.
On display at Eastman Nature Center in Minnesota in spring 2026, this exhibit invites visitors to listen to audio recordings and engage with accompanying artwork that brings forward a “line” from each storyteller—tracing the ways climate change intersects with identity, community, culture, emotion, and environmental justice.
This project is a collaboration between North Hennepin Community College (NHCC), Change Narrative LLC, and Three Rivers Park District’s Eastman Nature Center.
As part of NHCC’s Environmental Justice and Nature Immersion course, students spent time learning in a wilderness camp setting, building community while exploring environmental justice, access to outdoor spaces, and care for climate, land, and water. Through a Climate Storytelling Workshop facilitated by Change Narrative, students transformed their experiences into original climate stories. Working with youth project coordinator and storyteller Kimimila Decory and artist Julie Marckel, each student selected one line from their story to inspire a piece of artwork — bringing their words into visual form for public sharing.
Four Lines celebrates and affirms the power of youth voice.
We invite you to listen, reflect, and consider how stories from all generations are vital testimonies to activate a more just and resilient future.
Storytelling and science both rely on exploration. Visual art offers another way of seeing and communicating—illuminating pathways to transform and express complex issues. As an alternative medium, it fosters connection, reflection, and more holistic understanding (Juhola et al., 2024).
Translating personal stories into artistic interpretation deepens how we engage and make meaning, and as a result, new insights and perspectives can emerge. Perhaps most importantly, stories and art together can help break down barriers and cultivate more compassionate listening needed in a disconnected world.
Julie Marckel
Julie Marckel is a science educator and artist who worked with each student to transform story lines from each of the four voices into watercolor and sketch artwork. Beginning with graphite and layered washes of color, each piece weaves together imagery and text of their words, framed by a continuous line repeating the storytellers’ names — reflecting both individual stories and the shared spirit of Four Lines—interwoven voices held together in a shared form.
Youth Storytellers
Climate change is not distant — it is in our neighborhoods, our backyards, and woven into everyday life.
Stories connect head + heart. They balance data with our human experience, making climate change personal, and relatable. Data tells us what is happening—but stories show us the heart of why it matters. According to Neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio, “Information becomes meaningful to the extent that it evokes emotion.”
We all have a climate story to tell. Each speaks to the depth of our lived experience in a warming world. The stories we tell, matter! According to neurologists, hearing a powerful story about an experience lights up the same neurological regions of the brain as if the listener had experienced the events themselves in real life Zack (2015). In this way stories and how vividly we tell them, can serve as powerful tools to visualize another’s experience, recall our own memories, inspire us to take action, and spark our imagination for new futures, and shape what we choose next.
Click on each youth storyteller below to hear their voice and read their words.