Exploring Climate Anxiety in Young Creatives through Research-Based Filmmaking

This research investigates climate anxiety and its manifestations in the daily lives and creative practices of art students, using a research-based arts approach. The conceptual framework is rooted in student-centred research principles, addressing social and individual issues, primarily mental health and climate change, which were identified as significant concerns for students at the Latvian Academy of Culture during a preliminary study.

Through collaboration with students from the fields of audiovisual art, cultural sociology and cultural and arts studies, this research uses art-making as both a method of inquiry and a form of data production. The research integrates qualitative methods such as focus group discussions on climate anxiety, creative self-reflection, and ethnographic analysis of the filmmaking process, not only gathering data but transforming it into short films. The creative process itself becomes a tool to express and reflect upon how young people experience the emotional impacts of climate change.

One of the key features of this research is the ethnographic documentation of the filmmaking process, which captures the students’ creative practices and their reflections on the theme of climate anxiety. The films serve as both artistic outputs and analytic tools, enabling an in-depth exploration of how future film professionals and artists internalize, articulate, and respond to environmental instability. These audiovisual works provide rich, visual evidence of the intersection between mental health, creativity, and climate concerns, showing how art can serve as data and illuminate complex emotional responses to global challenges.

This paper aims to highlight how creative processes can deepen our understanding of climate anxiety and the instrumentality of a research-based arts approach. It emphasizes the value of arts-based approaches and contributes to methodological discussions on the research of complex emotional responses, global challenges and creative lives of young people.