Gender, Generation and Climate Change (GENERATE): Creative Approaches to Building Inclusive and Climate-Resilient Cities in Uganda and Indonesia

GENERATE combines and mobilises social sciences and applied arts to advance intersectional approaches to climate research and action. The project creatively investigates gender and age as key variables that intersect in urban settings to shape impacts and responses to climate change in different ways. Bringing together interdisciplinary teams of researchers, artists, urban communities and key stakeholders, GENERATE is building understanding of, and challenging, the intersecting injustices that exacerbate climate impacts across seven cities in Uganda and Indonesia.

GENERATE aims to broaden and deepen current approaches to gender and intersectionality in climate action and urban governance, which tend to neglect age as a variable, and frequently equate gender solely with women (and poor rural women in particular), often excluding the experiences of men and sexual and gender diverse people.

This first systematic and arts-based exploration of the 'gender-age-urban' interface of climate change is delivering critical new evidence on how intersecting inequities and oppressions can increase urban residents' vulnerability to climate and environmental injustices and reduce their ability to benefit equitably from climate action and sustainable development.

Focusing on two countries at high risk: Uganda and Indonesia, GENERATE is building a creative, feminist and participatory research framework that brings together child, adult and older perspectives over time across seven cities. As part of a commitment to decolonial, collaborative and feminist methodologies, GENERATE is building collaborations with some of the most marginalised urban communities.
This includes women, older people, people with diffabilities, informal workers, sexual and gender diverse people, refugees and asylum-seekers, and youth. Collaborations draw on local arts and knowledges to foreground the perspectives, needs and responses of these communities, and promote their participation in climate action and urban governance.

Working in partnership with stakeholders from governments, (inter)national organisations, urban authorities and the third sector, GENERATE is co-devising, piloting and evaluating arts-led, contextually-relevant and evidence-informed strategies for accommodating growing urban populations more equitably and driving the social transformation necessary to achieve greater equity and social, climate and disaster justice.