Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies
The Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies is an incubator for researching environmental stories across cultures and contexts; evaluating the impact of environmental media and communications; teaching and mentoring diverse future leaders in effective communication and multimedia storytelling; creating new narratives for environmental science, policy, and advocacy; and collaborating with nonprofits, companies, and community groups to create strategic environmental communication campaigns. Diversity is central to the vision, mission, goals, and practices of LENS.
The inaugural issue of LENS: The Journal of Environmental Narratives, a creative academic journal produced by UCLA undergraduates: personal narratives, essays, fiction, poetry and art about the many environments we live in.
Grand Theft Eco: Environmental Futures of Los Angeles is a creative film project that repurposes the game engine and design of the video game Grand Theft Auto V to explore possible eco-futures of Los Angeles in the year 2050.
In Season 3 of the podcast of the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies, we speak to activists, experts, and artists working toward just futures for California's Imperial Valley, Indigenous communities…
In 2021, LENS partnered with the Labyrinth Project, a collaborative urban anthropological inquiry into nature in Los Angeles, to produce a series of episodes based on the Labyrinth team’s fieldwork…
The new podcast from UCLA's Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies shares stories of environmental justice and imagination in California and beyond.
Season 1 of LENS.cast features two episodes about environmental justice in Los Angeles. In episode 1, we explore the history and future of Los Angeles’s remarkable trees. California is more than…
With support from voters, Los Angeles County is investing billions of dollars from Measures W, H, A, and M in clean, safe water, housing and homeless services, parks and open…
California state parks are a tremendous, potentially underutilized resource to promote youth health. More than half of young people under 18 in California live within the “visitorshed” of one or…
LENS has partnered with KCET, the nation's largest independent public media company to produce engaging, research-driven environmental stories.
In 2014, California voters approved a $7.5 billion bond measure to fund water quality, supply, and infrastructure improvements. Prop 1 included significant provisions to prioritize investments in disadvantaged communities. For…
When large parks are built in historically marginalized urban areas, they can contribute to “green gentrification,” a process involving increases in housing prices and the influx of new, wealthier and…
LENS Magazine, hosted on Medium.com, is home to essays, photography & art, criticism, stories, theory & practice and interviews curated by the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS). Medium.com is…