Listen to this article
Estimated 3 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
Lulit Endale is singing about what is on her mind: climate change.
“It’s a little bit scary,” said the 15-year-old from Edmonton.
“Every day you wake up and you see some news that the world is just going downhill.”
The member of the Edmonton Young Voices community choir says she feels fear, exhaustion and apprehension.
“I’m not even an adult yet, and I don’t know what’s in the future”.
The community choir, established 13 years ago, has 120 members and includes singers from kindergarten to their mid-20s.
This year, the choir’s spring concert is a love letter to the planet along with a research project on how young people are coping with climate change.
Hannah Bayne, University of Alberta PhD candidate in the School of Public Health, said the issues are well documented when it comes to eco-anxiety and climate grief.
University of Alberta researcher Hannah Bayne is studying how art can help children articulate and cope with the eco-anxiety and climate grief. (Adrienne Lamb/CBC)
“It’s these feelings of stress and worry around the future,” said Bayne, 25. “And the feelings of loss and of sadness for the things that we see changing in our environment.”
Bayne is working with the choir members and exploring how they feel about climate and how singing about the issues has influenced those emotions, to learn how music can be used as a climate adaptation strategy.
Bayne herself is concerned about snowfall amounts and the longer wildfire seasons in Alberta. She said at times she feels “hopeless about her own existence” and the prospect of having children.
“Music is one of the ways that I think could be really effective at allowing people to process and cope with these emotions,” said the former EYV choir member.
WATCH | Members of the Edmonton Young Voices community choir gearing up for their spring concert:
Children’s choir sets climate change anxiety to music
The members of the Edmonton Young Voices community choir are preparing for a special spring concert articulating their feelings about climate change and taking part in an eco-anxiety study at the University of Alberta.
The choir’s artistic director, Lyndsey Olsen, believes in the power of song.
“I do think music can touch people in a way that maybe a news story or just a conversation may not.”
That’s why she developed the 100-minute performance called Pale Blue Dot featuring music that explores the relationship with the natural world, from joy and wonder, to reflection and responsibility including an original composition by Sheila Wright. It’s set to be performed May 9.
Lyndsey Olsen, Edmonton Young Voices artistic director, coaches the community choir through a recent rehearsal. (Adrienne Lamb/CBC)
Olsen said the idea grew from there to now include singers constructing climate emotion collages to express their feelings, research interviews and climate cafès with singers, a workshop with local Indigenous composer Sherryl Sewepagaham, and an upcoming collaborative concert with Pro Coro Canada.
She said the “coolest parallel” between climate change and choir is that every week members get to experience how their voice becomes a part of something bigger.
A climate emotion collages by choir member Isaac Ryan who is in Grade 4. (Adrienne Lamb/CBC)
“Sometimes it doesn’t feel like our little actions as individuals can do much in the face of such a daunting crisis but that collectively there is hope.”
Toby Maltais, 20, said it is about that shared voice.
Maltais has been a member of Edmonton Young Voices for eight years and said singing about climate change is a comfort.
“It really helps to relieve that anxiety, or at the very least that people are feeling the same as what you’re feeling. It makes me feel less alone,” said Maltais.
Members of the Edmonton Young Voices gather around the baby grand piano at a recent rehearsal. (Adrienne Lamb/CBC)