Jason Davis

Composer

Jason Davis is a musician and environmental educator based in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the founder and director of Climate Stories Project, an interactive forum for sharing stories about the effects of climate change on our lives and in our communities. Jason is an active musician, performing jazz, classical, and world music in many ensembles as well as teaching music to students in his studio and online. He leads the improvisation/environmental sound group Earthsound, which has recorded Movement, a critically acclaimed CD of original music and natural sound. Jason has a Master’s degree in Ecology and Conservation from the University of Florida, as well as a Master’s degree in Music from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. For his thesis, he studied the relationship between local communities and private protected areas around Monteverde, Costa Rica. Jason has worked as a park ranger and educator for National Park Service, Appalachian Mountain Club, and Massachusetts State Parks as well as a course writer for Green Education Foundation, a nonprofit organization that develops and distributes online courses focused on sustainability.

Climate Stories Project is an interactive forum for sharing stories about the effects of climate change on our lives and in our communities. Too often, we distance ourselves from climate change by viewing it only through the lenses of science and politics. What we need is to tell stories about how climate change is affecting people and communities around the world, heard directly from the voices of those being affected. On climatestoriesproject.org, participants can upload their recorded “climate story” or arrange to conduct an interview about their response to climate change in person or over Skype. Participants may talk about observing changes in weather patterns, seasons, water resources, their emotional reactions to climate change, and the ways in which they and their community are responding to climate change. The structure of the climate stories is ultimately directed by the first-hand experience of the participants themselves.

One goal for the project is to develop a platform where participants can share recorded climate stories and other media such as photos, video, and writing about our responses to climate change, accessed online through an interactive map of the world. Another goal is to use the recorded climate stories as the basis for composed and improvised music, as presented by the group Earthsound. A third goal is to develop Climate Stories Project into an educational curriculum that can be used to teach about climate change in formal and informal education settings. Ultimately, Climate Stories Project represents a unique, artistic, and engaging way for people around the world to understand climate change and its impacts on people, communities, and the natural world.