Storytelling for Environmental Justice, Care, and Community Change

A collaborative storytelling and public humanities project with the Iowa Environmental Council, Drake University students, and community.

FILM 1: Walking in Place (WIP) is a film and community archive created by Amal Barre. WIP uses film and historical GIS to reconstruct landscapes erased by urban change, and to honor the lives shaped, displaced, and reassembled through it. The project dwells in the quiet, persistent forms of resistance: the act of remembering, of returning, and of refusing to forget. The first film in the series, :1434 Walker Street (2024), was created in collaboration with Des Moines-based jazz musician, Don Brown. Length: 12 minutes

FILM 2: Views From the Garage and Other Places (2026) is inspired by the ever-present landscape of garages and parking lots in Des Moines, a city with roughly seven parking spots per resident. Absurd, yet common across the American urban landscape. The film reflects on how extractive logics shape our relationship to land and nature, producing spatial orders that appear neutral while quietly regulating both people and possibility. Attending to the everyday, it traces how coloniality continues to enclose space, movement, and imagination. The film was made in collaboration with ArtForce Iowa. Length: 6 minutes

STORYTELLING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE FILMS was developed through the StoryLab at Drake University by Environmental Justice course students in partnership with the Iowa Environmental Council. Length: 20 min

Following the screening, stay for a conversation with student filmmakers and local guests, reflecting on the stories, the process, and the questions these films raise.

(IEC) is leading the way to create a safe, healthy environment and sustainable future for Iowa. Through advocacy, education and coalition-building, IEC creates large-scale change that makes Iowa a better place to live, work, explore and enjoy.

Carol Spaulding-Kruse is a professor of English at Drake and the founder and director of Drake Community Press. The DCP publishes books in partnership with community organizations, including Sacrifice State: Iowa Voices on Environment and Justice with the Iowa Environmental Council.

Amal Barre (Linktree) is an urban planner, researcher, and filmmaker based in Amsterdam and Des Moines. Her work explores the built environment as a site of memory, struggle, and possibility, shaped by over a decade in affordable housing and influenced by Black spatial imaginaries. Working across film, mapmaking, and research, she examines how systems both sustain and harm, and how they might be reimagined. Amal is an adjunct faculty member at Drake and facilitates the film workshops for students enrolled in the Environmental Justice Course.

StoryLab explores storytelling as a practice of hope and a critical exercise that helps participants make sense of where we have been, where we are, and where we might go. Students in the Environmental Justice class, in partnership with the Iowa Environmental Council, explore human and non-humans relationships to the environment through storytelling, observation, and lived experience.

• Screening of short films
• A moderated conversation local experts and students centered on storytelling as a practice of critical engagement.
• Audience Q&A

This event is an opportunity to:

• Engage with student films that explore environmental issues through observation, storytelling, and lived experience
• Reflect on how environmental challenges take shape in Iowa—from water quality and agricultural landscapes to community health and environmental risk
• Consider how storytelling shapes what we notice, question, and often overlook
• Participate in a community conversation about local issues and connect with your neighbors.

📍 Location: Sussman Theater | Olmstead Center (lower level)
📅 Date: May 4
⏰ Time: 6:00–8:00 PM
🎟 Cost: Free and open to the public
🚗 Parking: Free parking available near the auditorium

This is a FREE public, community-centered event. All are welcome.

This event is supported by the at Drake University.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Sussman Theater | Olmstead Center (lower level), 2875 University Ave, Des Moines, United States

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