Glacier Gifts: adventures in creative writing in the Peruvian Andes

Glacier Gifts is a project designed to bring together scientific researchers in the UK and Peru with author and creative, Diane Samuels, to activate public exploration of current environmental research on the impacts of climate change and glacier retreat in Peru. Through a series of virtual creative writing workshops facilitated by Diane, we have collated and edited a collection of pieces, written by our team of researchers and by Diane, for public dissemination, with an aim of stimulating engagement of diverse audiences beyond the scientific community. During the workshops we practised free-writing and word-collage, inspired by key words, phrases, stories, and images of the environment and culture of the Peruvian Andes, producing raw material which was subsequently crafted to combine individual and collective voices in our book. The collection is also illustrated with personal photographs by team members, and original artwork by Caroline Clason. Glacier Gifts draws upon both lived experience in Peru and scientific engagement with the challenges of glacier change and water security in the Andes, linking to the SIGMA: Peru and Nuestro Rio research projects. Glacier Gifts emotionally, imaginatively, and factually, shares the personal, collective, local, and global impacts of environmental change in this climate-sensitive region of the mountain cryosphere, providing an opportunity for scientific narrative to reach a wider, non-academic audience enveloped within a creative experience.