1. Narrative — e.g. Written text

The following is a short vignette about growing plants in space (controlled environment agriculture), contextualises the affordances of plants in space and illustrate how cli-fi is used in P4S education programs for environmental education. It was generated by Google Gemini AI chat, and it represents is the types of introductory stories and scene setting by Plants for Space interacting with schools, teachers, students and public audiences:

Prompt: Can you write me a 400-word sci-fi story about the joy and success, a eutopia, of growing plants in space contrasting it to the misery and hardship of living on Earth which is a waste land due to climate change.

Stories like this connect us with Anya, we feel her joy and sadness, we are building on our current understanding of nature and reconceptualising what it might look like in another setting, I’m connecting with, and “seeing” the plants, and understand Anya has a job to care for them. Is this a possible future career for students? Who is Anya? is she like me? I wonder what interests and skills she has? There is a striving and resilience underpinning the story, its optimistic about the future we can create together. There is brief mention of how Anya is growing plants, how is she doing this? What is for dinner? Always how will she go to the bathroom? Will she only grow and eat potatoes like in The Martian?

The stories are a stimuli and platform for wondering, a nucleation point for students and teachers to “problem find” and for finding plant-based “problem solving” that mirrors the P4S researchers. They align and connect themselves to the concept and need for growing plants in space with the mindset to possibilities.

Sustainability is a subtle reference in the story, closed and distant and challenging growth environments, but a point that young people are drawn to and passionate about (Barraclough et al., Reference Barraclough, Sakiyama, Schultz and Måren2021). Technology is named — hydroponics (a watering and nutrient distribution technique) — not explained but contextualised and some meaning can be extracted and compared to the “dust bowl” and “scorched land” of Earth… yet more wondering… Will there be tomatoes in Space? What else? Will they be eaten fresh?

The purpose of the story is not to win any literary awards, its value is in using a P4S lens to activating prior knowledge, igniting attention and stimulating curiosity. It does not convey details about what happened on Earth, why they needed to leave, how they live on Mars, how the grow food and the problems they might face. It does feel like pro-space propaganda, but the contrast and clear positive and negative features are clear and obvious signposts for the futures we want.

The reasons for the Mars missions are different to those suggested here — there are limitations and misconceptions for the real-world context that need to be acknowledged and managed. The idea of “why space?” when we have issues on Earth is side stepped. It is important to bring attention to the justifications of Space for Earth and potential benefits for sustainability and sustainable agriculture.

This type of story is only used as an amuse-bouche, an introduction, a stimulus for inquiry, discussion point /provocation to reveal prior understanding. It is one ingredient to create a P4S learning experience that captures attention, provides concrete resources to engage thinking. The resources could be used to make understanding visible and an opportunity of giving feedback on student understanding and consolidating learning as part of a school-based curriculum (Ritchhart et al., Reference Ritchhart and Perkins2008; Dehaene, Reference Dehaene2020). Perhaps to initiate an inquiry or science investigation about “how plants grow” and how that relates to people and climate and water usage. It would enable student agency in a range of directions, whilst building skills such as writing and critical thinking, and build curriculum aligned knowledge with a real-world context.

Let’s continue to look at a few more examples of cli-fi for Environmental Education when exploring Plants for Space to meet curriculum outcomes.

2. Image based introduction of Plants for Space

Figure 2 shows the artist Bruce Moffett’s rendering for P4S’s vision it was commissioned by Plants for Space to illuminate a potential future — a visual explanation what a future may look like. It is a picture that tells the Plants for Space story. “Slow Looking” (Tisman, Reference Tisman2018) can reveal some of its meaning and with story guidance, the climate fiction and P4S mission aspirations.

Figure 2.

A visual explanation of plants for space (artist Bruce Moffett). It was a commissioned piece that illuminates what life off Earth could look like and how plants, people, technology might live sustainably. A strong feature of the image is the vertical farming (in the enclosed space). It is a picture to tell the story of what plants for space aim to achieve.

Figure 2 depicts three people living in a Martian base (window top left with a fourth figure in the Martian atmosphere). Inside the base the people are calm and relaxed, sitting at a bench seat working on laptops in the canteen/breakaway area. Someone is in the kitchen that looks very similar to an Earthly Ikea kitchen, with sink, fridge stove and oven. The backdrop of the picture is the most striking element, showing vertical farming, essentially racks or shelves of plants, the signs indicating spinach, tomato and carrot. The pinkish lighting is depicted accurately to what occurs in controlled environments on Earth (a light recipe rich in red and blue light, the wavelengths of light best utilised by plants for photosynthesis).

This image (Figure 2) is fiction, set on Mars, but looks decidedly familiar, human and informal with an additional, if unusual conservatory/glasshouse! This is drawn from the ideas and intentions of Plants for Space Martian missions, and sustainable farming practises of Vertical farming — this on the cusp of reality, to show what might be achieved or aimed for.

It might also be worth noting artists recollections and impressions from other space cultural references like Jetsons, Star Wars, Star trek, Red dwarf, Interstellar, Dune, Lost in Space, For All Mankind, Soylent Green, Bladerunner, Silent running and futuristic styles like Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, and William Gibson, and Richard Morgan. Moon landing, images beamed from across the solar system, space disasters like challenger, Rover landings, Elon Musk’s SpaceX landings, immediate connections and uses of satellites for weather information, GPS and more… just like everyone else, bring a unique collection of these types of stories ideas and societal familiarities with them. They are potent and universal. We can build on and activate these common tropes and styles. But also recognising the individualised and established ideas and values that people carry with them about space, food, agriculture, technology and themselves. These should be handled carefully to avoid environmental learnings being rejected out of hand and to increase environmental understanding.

Figure 3 spotlights the focus areas of P4S and is used in multiple ways to introduction to activities or presentations to orientate audiences to thinking about P4S and what it represents.

Figure 3.

Analysis of the image of the P4S vision. Annotation explicitly aligns different visual elements with the P4S missions featuring food, plants, people and products.

This piece of fiction is the synthesis of the aims and intentions of P4S and the world and the extraterrestrial environments. Let’s take a walk through the image (see Table 2) and what it represents and the questions and ideas it might provoke. Using the image teachers cab ask students what questions it elicits. Or “Further Questions” in Table 2. may provide questions to encourage student to think more deeply about a topic. This may function as introductory activity into ecosystems, or sustainable farming etc… or inquiry/scientific investigation or an environmental campaign or design sprint challenge. These questions align to P4S research, giving the activity an authentic and interdisciplinary edge. Students are embodying the cognitive world a researcher.

Table 2.

Showing the connections the P4S missions with the vision image and the P4S research areas and the example questions those visual elements might provoke in students

The Figure 3 image can tell the story of space and an approach to sustainable Earth agriculture and society. This single image spans the whole school curriculum from STEM to HASS and beyond, asking:

Figure 2 or 3 could be offered in parallel or in juxtaposition with the Plants for Space introduction video (ARC Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space, 2025b). The video clip outlines the aims of P4S and careers available. Both Figure 1 and the introductory video carry the same message or values of human curiosity, striving and improving the world in line with humans needs and sustainability. Modelling the characteristics and ways of being in the world, as environmental education teachers, we aim to cultivate in our students.

3. P4S story telling cards — student activity

P4S aims to encourage audiences to engage deeply with the concept of P4S, what issues there are with sustainable farming, what tools there might be to overcome them and what impacts they might have. P4S generated 44 storytelling cards (front and back) (Figure 4) to help develop understanding and offer a scaffold to communicate ideas and visions of solutions of what space and sustainable farming might look like considering human survival and wellness.

Figure 4.

Show a sample of the P4S story telling cards. One side of the cards display information in four different, colour coded groups: plants, tools, products and outcomes. The reverse side shows a P4S researcher and describes their work and how it that relates to flip side of the card and the P4S missions. These can be found and accessed at ARC Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space (2025a, b).

Cards are framed by character driven challenge cards or a P4S Mission. Cards invite the reader to find solutions to problems of space and sustainable agriculture. Participants can choose specific plants, plant products and parts, tools they can use or ways they can bring about desired goals, outlining how have they solved the issue at hand.

Example 1:

Character driven specific problem card:

Following a review of the plants, products, tools and outcomes, participants might create their own story that might look like this:

Spinach

-Nutritious

-Green (to raise his spirits)

- to make cheese and crackers

Controlled environment — to increase growth rate and with an altered nutrient mix to increase iron content

Synthetic biology — to increase the protein content in both the leaves and roots (that are usually wasted)

Outcomes

-Mental health — happier

-Physical health through diet

-Potential social activity

Example 2:

Challenge card:

Design a plant for future food

Following review of the plants, products, tools and outcomes, participants might create their own story that might look like this:

Duckweed — quick growing and nutritious (high protein)

Hydroponic system (on water) — grows efficiently

Breeding — enhancing its textures, remove bitterness and increase sweets

Synthetic biology — add/ change the plants genetics to increase tastes like chocolate or orange

3D Printing — the enhanced texture to enable a suitable matrix (slop) for 3D printing food

Outcome

Delightful plant-based chocolate orange sculptures that are artful, playful, nutritious future food!

Affordances of storytelling cards

For participants to create their own stories, they need an understanding of the problems and solutions. P4S research sits on the edge of current human understanding and give us a chance to glimpse what might be achieved in the near future. Using the P4S research narratives provides a solid foundation and background knowledge. It is also a reliable and trusted source. P4S can extend current understanding into possible, or alternative futures. P4S provide the background understanding, problems, tools, and protocols to find solutions. The character driven cards allow participants to define and refine the problems they chose to solve and potentially see a person to help and reflecting that in the solutions. This is a collaborative activity with multiple inputs, voices, ideas, background understandings, and preferences to be listen to and incorporated and offers student agency. There are no “the best answer” or solutions only a process of thinking and enhancing and striving for improvement.

These story cards are an example of individualised de-constructed cli-fi stories that participants can re-constitute, add to and build on — they are the authors of their own cli-fi stories in the context of P4S and sustainable agriculture. They are creating a version of the future. Their ideas, embodying the solutions feed and build passion motivations, self-efficacy and affective connections to striving for a better world.

These cards directly relate to the P4S missions but the approach, in principle, is a potent way of participants creating more specific cli-fi stories and art pieces to learn from and share.

The flipside of the story cards shows an image of P4S researcher and provides a brief overview of the type of research they are carrying out and what they hope to achieve. This was aimed at providing authenticity, that these are real people doing real jobs and they are from a broad range of differing ethnicities, languages backgrounds and genders. They are STEM role models and represent different career paths and types of STEM interests. Important for creating an inclusive STEM culture and closing inequities (Fuesting et al., Reference Fuesting and Diekman2017). Participants are in the borderlands of fact-fiction, the possible and impossible and desirable, play and reflection, possible identities. A liminal space.

The meaning of the P4S story cards is not immediate, It takes time for the range of ideas and inputs to be interpreted and meaning constructed and synthesised. The impact is therefore greater than the Figure 2 P4S image. The solution is not laid out and demonstrated to them, participants are the architects and engineers devising the plant designs to find solutions that work — Phyto-engineers. This is an act of critical and creative thinking, exploring possibles, to refine desired outcomes and the limitations.

These cards have supported primary to secondary students to imagine designer plants including:

• Tomato’s tasting of lemon.

• Strawberry leaves that can be switched on by light to make paracetamol.

• A fish and chip plant that can grow potato hydroponically, juicy sweet tomatoes fruits and a genetically modified stem to make oils and the leaves to make fish proteins so they may enjoy fish and chips with tomato sauce in space.

• Short plants with no roots to fit into vertical farms not wasting. energy to growing roots in hydroponics.

• Multi-fruit plants.

• Many more!

Their understanding of human needs, needs of the plants and tools to create a future plants and sustainable futures where clearly on display in their drawing and oral descriptions. This activity has been warmly received by teaches, students and public audiences.

Participants have to get their “hands dirty” and rummage and struggle to produce solutions. This is largely a self-directed activity, a point which speaks to participant agency, and authenticity of process that reflect the values of the research and education resources. The participants themselves are a potential outcome, becoming “change makers” and problem solvers but without any emphasis on them directly having to make changes and take actions that are out of their sphere of influence such as actions that would make genuine impact.

In which case whose responsibility is it to make genuine impact, for example large scale industrial, legislative and economic changes? I would argue that this is and should be the responsibility of adults in power. P4S are asking participants to understand the issues and solutions and embody the behaviours and values involved in leading change. This could be framed in a few ways, P4S are placing the participant outcomes on the participants themselves 1) at an “appropriate development stage” (Metz, Reference Metz2009), 2) inside participants Vygotskian Zone Proximal development (Wass & Golding, Reference Wass and Golding2014), 3) reducing cognitive (and emotional) load burden (Sweller, Reference Sweller2011), 4) enabling participants to follow their interests and values, or 5) not adding additional youth stress to solve the worlds ills without influence.

P4S provide the resources to build understanding, skills and the attitudes to succeed in school and beyond, encouraging skills that could be used to bring about change in the future.

4. Design a plant — flipbook activity

Another approach involves participants as the creators of ideal plants using a “trifold flip book” (see Figure 5). Participants review and compare the strengths, weaknesses and products for different plants and different plant parts. They can create a range of hybrid plants that include the most useful characteristics of different plants.

Figure 5.

P4S design plant for space “trifold”. Students select the desirable plant traits in the root, shoot and flowing parts, and can mix and match to create a variety of possible space plant combinations. (ARC Centre of Excellence Plants for Space, 2025a).

Perhaps the grain of wheat, the stem of celery and root of carrots! This is entry level to encouraging people to think about plant waste, as well as the benefits of plant products and how they are vital for human survival. Another ingredient to the recipe for overcoming plant blindness.

Although this is less of a cli-fi story, the flipbooks do form part of a creative narrative, giving a permission to suspend reality, to play and experiment with new ideas in an engaging way. The resources enable exploration of topics such as sustainable agriculture, selective breeding, synthetic biology (gene editing) and controlled environment agriculture. Seeing what might be possible and understanding and valuing the importance and opportunities in nature and the environment.

5. Martian garden design sprints/design challenges/sci-fi/cli-fi prototyping

With a broad definition of climate fiction, we will now look at the final example of how P4S uses cli-fi in its education programs to explore agriculture and environmental sustainability. Here instead of participants consuming fiction pieces, they interact with expert knowledge and materials and use their imaginations to create their own fictions, stories, problems and solutions and define their own boundaries of possibilities. We are talking about design thinking, design sprints, design challenges and Sci-fi or cli-fi prototyping. Participants create prototypes of solutions, objects, processes or ideas. P4S has used a modified Standford d.school model of Design Thinking phases (Standford d.school, 2010), using the ideas, values and processes if not the exact terminology.

The phases of the P4S design thinking are represented in Figure 6, but not necessarily in a linear progression:

Figure 6.

The P4S design sprint model. This is modified from the Stanford d.school model, the there are two significant differences, 1) P4S derived prototypes can be used as a formative assessment of students understanding, identify misconceptions and gaps in understanding, rather than trialling the prototype to enhance the solution as in the d. school model. 2) the understanding phases is planned and scaffolded to ensure a shared and solid foundational knowledge that is curriculum aligned.

Activities can run for a term or an hour, with participants from a variety of ages and stages. P4S facilitators have little knowledge of prior learning or interests. As such, we assume no prior knowledge of astrobotany or controlled environment agriculture, and understand we need to provide the rough outline of the problem in the form of a design brief or challenge, a user, and a way to empathise and understand their needs and challenges this can be refined at any point.

To ensure participants can develop solutions, they need to understand the challenge in front of them, facts and information they need to understand the design limitations and even ways to that have previously been used to overcome similar problems e.g. indoor vertical farms. This can be achieved through many and multimodal means. P4S have used scaffolds have included spoken words, images, objects, knowledge organisers, video, researchers, text, and robotics. Participants are exposed to a constellation of knowledge, experiences, stories and observations that can all be drawn upon to generate solutions (Lu & Page, Reference Lu and Page2004).

The ideation phase is permission to get ideas on paper in a “quantity over quality” approach and ways to give individuals an equal opportunity to voice ideas. The group are then given the opportunity to discuss and dissect ideas and figure out their quality and workability (compared to their own definitions) and to refine, develop, and combine ideas.

Prototyping enables participants to physically create a model, a version of their ideas usually disguised in words or simple sketch. The process enables participants to communicate their ideas in different ways and can help to develop ideas and thinking. The materials used can even influence the design, understanding of the design challenge or spur new ideas.

A version of this design thinking activity about P4S and future sustainable farming is science fiction (or climate fiction) prototyping. Very similar in process with a key distinction, after participants develop understanding of the design challenge, they then embark on the creative writing process that brings the user, and the issues they face, into perspective. The rationale is that by creating their own problems and design brief, understanding of, and empathy with, the user aids creative solutions to the situation and a deeper understanding. Now add in the requirement to use technology in the design challenge or story, problem or solution. Then provide the technology to prototype the solution to the problem they created in words. This creates the opportunity for student agency, having choice and control in the types of problems they are addressing the types and forms of the solutions and prototypes they develop. P4S offer supportive “guiderails” and scaffolds to solutions to ensure student success.

Adding to the previous examples, these types of open-ended design challenges invite commitment and investment in the solutions — Striving. We propose this involvement derives from a deeper knowledge of the problems and solutions, participating in defining the narrative, and authenticity as they are working with world leading research experts tackling with real world challenges to raise the states of participating.

6. Reflections on the P4S Cli-fi examples

P4S have been sharing and creating story in sustainable agriculture different ways engaging many students and teachers in an range of formats including cli-fi under broad definition. This we believe is an example of Education in the Anthropocene (White et al., Reference White, Ardoin, Eames and Monroe2024) through a P4S lens. P4S are offering various approaches of offering knowledge, curriculum content, careers paths, and learning experiences that are relevant the world they are about to enter.

The dual purpose of space and sustainable on Earth farming is a powerful narrative that highlights possibilities for students, provides mental models what is possible and desirable in the world, and mindsets to help them succeed in space agriculture, space careers, food technology or another career they might choose.

The reflections on the use of the range of resources shown in this article from images and prewritten story at the beginning to cli-fi orientated design sprints at the end. P4S have gained many insights about the use of Cli-fi in trailing these materials and identified several continua for we believe contribute to making effective Cli-fi type materials.

• Engagement — basing things in space, in the future or away from now and self can free up creativity and boost engagement and enjoyment

• Agency — Giving students the opportunity for thinking and judgement and deciding, and navigating agency and groups on transdisciplinary challenges gave raise to surprising and surprisingly rich evidences of learning, depth of understanding and joy

• Authenticity — when researcher who is sending plants to grow on the moon is in the room as the students are designing plants for inhospitable environments integrating storytelling and futuring in the laboratories where this research is occurring too — the boundary of expert and novice degrade — it evolves in to “How might “We” overcome these challenges” I think this, and effective career/role modelling is only achievable when it is authentic, this type of experience and learning in this emotional/cultural context is impossible without the authenticity. Giving students and teachers these types of experiences can enhance learning but also their identity and potential career paths. Its special thing.

• Mirroring — the story cards and the Design sprints without appropriate encouragement the same ideas as outlined by P4S are mirrored in student designs. Indicating a range of examples are require to give sufficient creative fuel for their creative thinking. They must have a rich stockpile and striving spiritually to be playful with. Otherwise, what you put in comes back out pretty much the same.

The variety of activities and outcomes P4S has used cli-fi highlights a number of different continua that may be a useful guide or classification into future to reflect on when developing cli-fi and environmental education materials:

Continuum of involvement:

Consume/consider a presented story → creating own stories

Continuum of cli-fi presentation:

Showing and telling front led and static → Creating the conditions and materials for participants to create

Continuum of cli-fi engagement and impact:

Low → High

Continuum of cli-fi on knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours:

Low → High

Continuum of cli-fi on thinking:

Low → High

As we went through the showcase of resources (Static image → conversation → supported storytelling → problem finding and sci-fi prototyping) largely move along the continua from left to the right. This of course will need extended validation and testing.

Future research into these continua to dissect and segment these broad classifications would help to create a useable framework for teachers navigate and create activities and lessons with and students to use to use and understand directly to create an environmentally positive mindset.

These basic continua above might be informative when developing environmental education programmes and experiences, a tool for being intentional and reflective about the types of outcomes, process and methods being used.

To maximise impact students learning, attitudes and actions in environmental education using a variety of techniques over time, with teacher feedback and meaningful consolidation (Dehaene, Reference Dehaene2020), would engage, enable thinking and deeper agency.

P4S anticipate great value of using cli-fi and storytelling and narrative based approaches to explore sustainable farming and build connection with the environment. Presenting facts to be learnt or to influence behaviour is not effective, they are easily be dismissed forgotten or ignored, especially if they are not in alignment with prior knowledge (Toomey, Reference Toomey2023), P4S cli-fi stories and approaches offer an alternative. One we have seen in participants, and will be initiating our research programme. Through narrative and agency P4S aims to influence the thinking about and learning of new ideas. P4S has tried to use a positive and strength-based problem-solving approach placing the emphasis on learning and ideas rather than direct action with no effective outlet or mechanism to enable change. P4S is able to separate the issue of climate change, sustainable living and farming in both time and space in a playful “What might be possible…” type approach. Giving opportunities to hear, create and develop ideas collectively, and even see themselves represented in role models and highlighting career paths.

“We need to imagine it before it can be done” (paraphrasing Evans, Reference Evans2017). If “done” in this context is for environmental educators to ensure a society is informed and can act positivity for the environment and for each other, then absolutely yes, imagination is vital! But perhaps more than imagination is needed. That’s why P4S are aiming to support students, using cli-fi, to go beyond this. We are aiming to helping students synthesise visions or versions of their themselves, examine the values they hold, and “ways of being” in the world — their futures. This will shape how the world could /should be and help inform on the choices they make on food, farming, technology, sustainability and environmental conservation.