“It is critical that we provide our youth with opportunities to chart new pathways and to rethink the way they deal with environmental and human crises.”
Dr. Madhur Anand
The Young Environmental Science Writers was a one-of-a-kind transdisciplinary workshop for high school students. The program was designed, in collaboration with several partners to develop a curriculum that balances creativity and criticality and teaching young writers to interact with the natural world through both environmental science and creative writing.
YESWriters working on creative writing activity at the University of Guelph 
A walk through the University of Guelph Arboretum 
Creative writing inspired by natural objects 
Dr. Anand at the Field Guide launch event 
The Field Guides developed by YESWriters 
Creative writing meets science in the YESWriters Field Guide
Inspiring a new generation of scholars at the interface of environmental science and environmental art, the first Young Environmental Science Writers (YESWriters) workshop was hosted at the University of Guelph in July 2022, with attendees from Guelph, Cambridge, and Kitchener. The workshop was full of interdisciplinary talks from Guelph experts, writing exercises, place-based learning, and collaborative engagement with environmental problems.
As a follow-up component of the program, YESWriters developed Field Guides, a workbook that invites readers and writers to engage with the surrounding environment as an environmental scientist and a creative writer.
Interested in a copy of the Field Guide, or seeing the entire workbook? Contact Dr. Madhur Anand for access to information!
This project was developed in collaboration with:
The rare Charitable Research Reserve is a community-based urban land trust and environmental institute that protects highly sensitive lands and seeks to make the world a more sustainable place by protecting our natural spaces, today and into the future.
Musagetes is an international organization that makes the arts more central and meaningful in people’s lives, in our communities, and in our societies.
Young Environmental Science Writers is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
