THinking & doing Low-Carbon…
iT’s about how we Tug on our Drawstrings
Ever had a battle with your hoodie?
— You know how it goes: you pull too hard on one end of the drawstring and the other end slips from your fingers.
Making lower-carbon choices can feel a lot like that.
As a member of the Low-Carbon Research Methods Group, I continue to notice carbon in the ways I work and live. As I seek ways to intervene, I find myself pulling on both ends of a wicked drawstring —
From Fall 2022 to Spring 2025, as director of Wayfinding for Restorative Methods(Fall 2022– Spring 2025), I facilitated office hours and hosted international virtual gatherings where participants shared carbon-lowering skills.
In Summer 2026, I’ll launch the Wicked Drawstrings Project, an initiative shaped by three years of low-carbon insights. This multi-modal project offers an invitation to confront the most commonly referenced tension in the Wayfinding conversations: the trade-offs we face in choosing lower-carbon alternatives.
In a moment where seductive narratives encourage consumers they can have it all — that not to take both is the opposite of smart, the Wicked Drawstrings Project invites participants to experiment with a counter-narrative. What if we have more by taking less? What happens if we tug harder on only one end of our drawstring? — Can we live with the possible benefits of imbalance? — Of leaving one side longer, and the other short?
A school principal I worked for told me in 2010 — “Fair is not equal.”
The Wicked Drawstrings Project applies this logic to the choices we make — to the way we tug on our drawstrings. There’s only so much string to go round. By leaving one side shorter, can we and the human and more-than-human communities around us enjoy a better quality of life?
The Wicked Drawstrings Project
Launches Summer 2026
… come wearing your hoodie!
[Image of a hoodie with uneven drawstring ends]
Low-Carbon Highlights from 2022 – 2025
— WayFINDING for Restorative Methods —
2025
January 22 (January 23 for some Session #2 attendees)
Session #1 — "Let’s NOT talk about carbon” with Pok Man Tong and Kate Elliott
Pok Man Tong (Low-Carbon Conversation co-host) and Kate Elliott facilitated a continuation of this conversation, which started in November 2024. We offered creative ideas to invite carbon fatigued family, friends, colleagues, and neighbours into collaborative activities that inspire wonder and help shift to lower-carbon thinking. Pok Man Tong guided a compelling discussion of the carbon tensions in traditional holiday rituals.
Session #2 — “Solar Server: Low-Carbon Game Design” with Kara Stone
Guest speaker Kara Stone shared the creation of Solar Server, a solar-powered web server running from her apartment balcony that hosts a series of videogames designed to be low-carbon. Kara’s presentation introduced the inspiration and process for building the server and design tactics for the creation of its first game, Known Mysteries, the first chapter of which participants were invited to discover. together.
2024
November 19 (November 20 for some Session #2 attendees)
Session #1 — "Hosting meaningful online conversations"with guest speaker Aksel Biørn-Hansen.
Hosting meaningful conversations online can be hard, but not impossible. Art of Hosting (AoH) is an approach that offers a diverse toolbox of methods that can be used to host meaningful conversations and support co-creation, both physically and online. In this session, Aksel presented several concrete examples of online meetings where he and his research group have used AoH to host generative conversations about topics such as academic flying and sustainability education. This talk offered a very practical approach but also provided some theory framing, taking low-carbon conversation participants through the breadth and design of these sessions with a focus on process.
Session #2 — ”Let’s NOT talk about carbon”
We discussed creative ways to talk to climate fatigued family, friends, colleagues and neighbours about lowering carbon without actually talking about carbon. Can we find our way to lower carbon through wonder and through participating in shared activities? Participants said yes.
August 15 (August 16 for some Session #2 attendees)
Session #1 — “The FLIGHT project: attempts and struggles at unsettling the status quo of academic flying at a Swedish University” with Aksel Biørn-Hansen
In this session, Aksel shared ongoing efforts to encourage university staff to engage with their own flying data, and to collectively reflect on how this data connects to inequities and carbon-emissions at the university.
Session #2 —“Virtually There: Stories of best practices and next practices to ensure access, inclusion and enjoyment at virtual and hybrid conferences” with Kate Elliott
This session compared cases of conferences where options to participate virtually have enabled attendance by people who otherwise would not have been able to participate. Come and share your own experiences and wicked drawstrings! This session connects nicely to our November session about meaningful hosting online.
July 17 (July 18 for some Session #2 attendees) Click HERE for Summaryand HERE for video
“Low Carbon Consumer Electronics” with Brian Sutherland
In this session we looked at design-market logics which favour repeated consumption vs low carbon, degrowth strategies for repair, upcycling, and energy harvesting, some summer-friendly speculative designs to incline your electronic use towards zero carbon.
Click HERE for more details, about17 July, and for a summary of the June 12 Conversations.
June 12 (June 13 for some Session #2 attendees) Click HERE for a Summary
Workshop — “Bureaucracy-Busting for Carbon (and Frustration) Reduction” — To examine where bureaucracy, human frustration, and carbon emissions intersect, we workshopped real-life scenarios and discussed strategies to lower carbon through shifting ludicrous bureaucratic processes. (Spoiler alert: humour is an important part of our toolkit!)
During recent conversations, Wayfinding workshops and Low-Carbon Office Hours, many of you identified policies that “waste” your time and resources. Your examples clearly indicate that: where frustration lurks, carbon might be lurking, too.
Read some of the scenarios submitted for discussion —What do you think: can we shift policies to reduce both human frustration and carbon emissions?
May 14 (May 15 for some Session #2 attendees) ==> See this page for Session Notes
“Ditching Datacenters, Building Community, and Reclaiming Our Online Lives”
Session #1 - Guest Speaker: Quentin Dufour (of Deuxfleurs.fr — See also: Garage)
Session #2 - Guest Speaker: Forest Johnson (of cyberia.club)
**If you’d like to connect with the speakers to receive more information, contact Quentin HERE and Forest and SamHERE.
April 18 (April 19 for some Session #2 attendees) ==> See this page for Session Notes
Session #1 - Post-doctoral Researcher Ashley Cahillane joins us to share:: Decarbonising Research Policy: Reflections on a Series of Events
Session #2 - Considerations for Creating a Low-Carbon CV and using it to disseminate ideas around low-carbon possibilities within academia and beyond
March 13 (March 14 for some Session #2 attendees)
Making/Doing & Skillshare — In Session #1, we discussed what a low-carbon CV might be and do. In Session #2, we learned about small scale distributed networks of community-hosted servers, and discussed how this type of system might be implemented within the communities where we work and live. This is a discussion to be continued at a future Low-Carbon Conversation. Stay tuned!
February 15 (Feb 16 for some Session #2 attendees)
Making/Doing & Skillshare — We discussed carbon concerns in our own work and lives, shared low-carbon wishes for our institutions and beyond, and suggested creative initiatives to encourage specific carbon-lowering shifts in our communities. We proposed collaborative possibilities for this space