From slam poetry to keynote speeches, Quinn MacAskill started speaking out about climate change at 13. She reflects upon her journey so far and shares some key climate communication tips and advice for turning concern into action.
In some regards, Quinn MacAskill is a 17-year-old like many others in Sackville New Brunswick: she loves music and sports; is a student at the local high school; and has her sights set on university after she graduates. But over the past few years, MacAskill has become both a slam poet and an accomplished public speaker. She has given numerous keynotes speeches, performances, public talks and has spoken to crowds of up to 10,000 people about the urgent need for climate action.
In speaking out about the climate emergency, MacAskill has found a way to combine her skills and passion into a mission to educate others about the climate crisis. She found her calling when she was only 13 years old, becoming a strong outspoken voice for bold climate action. She credits the roots of her engagement to the love of nature and animals that her parents instilled in her and her brother from a young age.
“I’ve always had a really deep appreciation for nature and eventually I learned that it was being threatened by a variety of environmental issues, specifically climate change, probably most of all. And I couldn’t really have that knowledge and do nothing at the same time. I felt like I had to do something,” she says.
Her climate activism began when she was younger, with simple actions like turning off lights at home and gardening, encouraged and supported by her parents. Her mother, Samara Eaton, says it’s always been important to her to encourage her children to learn about environmental and social issues, and to care. And in MacAskill’s case, the more she learned about climate change, the more she wanted to do something about it.
“I think very quickly, you could tell that she realized this isn’t enough,” says Eaton. “It’s not just about turning off our own lights and reducing our car use.”
The big turning point came in 2019, when MacAskill was just 13 years old. She came across Greta Thunberg’s TEDx talk. “It changed my life really, because as soon as I watched that, I knew that that was what I had to do, that I had to start doing climate strikes,” says MacAskill. “Luckily there was a group of people in Sackville who were also interested in doing that. I was in middle school at the time, there were high school students and university students, and we all got together, and we planned a climate strike in Sackville for March 15th, 2019, to coincide with the Global Day of Action” says MacAskill.
“I started out without really that much experience at all, I mean, I was only 13, so I didn’t really know anything at that time,” she says with a laugh. But she was quick to learn from people much older than her how to organize and plan events, and her involvement grew from there. Soon she was speaking at and MCing rallies, writing demands to government and performing her very own slam poetry.
In her middle school, she was known to staff and students as an environmental leader. Her former principal, Heather Dixon, remembers hearing about MacAskill not long after she took on the position as principal of Marshview Middle School. “Very early on, sort of week one on the job, you kind of knew what Quinn was passionate about and you wanted to help her out in any way that you could.”
“When you meet Quinn, she’s so intelligent and very down to earth, she’s very well spoken, but also comes across kind of on the quieter side. But given a platform, you know that she has something meaningful to say,” says Dixon. MacAskill often came to staff with different ideas and environmental initiatives for the school, and Dixon thinks that school staff learnt a lot from her.
“She changed the adult’s views in that building,” says Dixon.
“She changed the adults’ views in that building.”
-Heather Dixon, Principal, Marshview Middle School
Heather Dixon is the Principal at Marshview Middle School. Image provided by Heather Dixon
Given MacAskill’s track record, when an opportunity for young people to speak at a TEDx event in Moncton came across Dixon’s desk in 2019, it made sense to suggest it to Quinn, who prepared a speech and performed some slam poetry at the event. “She killed it. She was fantastic,” recalls Dixon, who was in the audience that day.
Watch Quinn MacAskill’s 2019 Tedx talk and her slam poetry performance:
In October of that year, MacAskill had her biggest public speaking engagement yet: speaking at WE Day Atlantic, in front of a crowd of 10,000.
She stepped on stage with her customary confidence and told the audience about Greta Thunberg’s Tedx talk, and how it inspired her first slam poem.“I write to understand my world, the environment that surrounds us, and the different emotions I feel about the climate crisis,” she told the audience.
“I write to understand my world, the environment that surrounds us, and the different emotions I feel about the climate crisis.”
-Quinn MacAskill
Although the inspiration to write poetry initially took her by surprise, MacAskill welcomed the break from numbers and statistics about the climate crisis. “To have an artistic perspective on the same subject is a little bit refreshing sometimes,” she says.
MacAskill’s perspective on art and her passion for writing is something she shares with writer, activist, and former Sackville poet laureate Marilyn Lerch. The pair got to know each other at writing events in Sackville, and Lerch was immediately impressed by MacAskill’s writing and by her passion. “To see young people both engaging themselves not just in political action but in the work of literature, in the imaginative life in order to move people in another way, is so important. And to see that happening, because we will fade, we will die, and Quinn and others will go on,” says Lerch.
MacAskill’s words resonate with people because she speaks from her heart. “She’s enormously likeable. There’s no false front or pretense, she’s a totally genuine human being. And people in our time, I think, it’s so important to see that genuineness because of all the fakery that is about us everywhere. In that way she just stands clear of so many other people. And she is able to move people to do things,” says Lerch.
MacAskill’s public speaking and slam poetry has earned her praise from many other people across her community, including Memramcook-Tantramar Green MLA Megan Mitton. “While it’s not fair to young people to put the burden of addressing climate emergency on them, I’m glad that people like Quinn MacAskill are stepping up because we need her. She’s a leader, and I know she doesn’t do it alone, and I think that’s part of the point with the climate strikers” says Mitton. MacAskill’s dedication even earned her the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee medal this past January, an honour she got to share with Marilyn Lerch.
Since 2019, and despite the Covid-19 pandemic, MacAskill has continued to deliver keynote speeches to a whole range of audiences, from educators to students like herself. She takes her responsibility as a public speaker seriously, keeping up to date on the latest climate change science and doing her best to understand the issues surrounding it, “so I can make sure that I’m doing the right thing and trying to convey the right messages when I’m speaking to people,” she says. Over the years, she has settled on a few key messages that she always returns to in her speeches.
Key messaging for climate communication
- be clear about the need for bold systemic action
- Focus on reasons for hope
- But acknowledge fear and worry
- Frame the climate crisis as an opportunity to build a better society
- Show how climate action and social justice go hand-in-hand
- Be creative: use art or poetry as ways to connect with people
“I always talk about the need for action, and not just small-scale action, like bold systemic action”, she says. And action goes hand-in-hand with another key component: focusing on hope.
In response to some people’s nihilistic view of climate change, she tells them that there’s still time. “We have the opportunity to change, there are people already working on it, and everyone can contribute in their own way and there are so many reasons for hope,” she says.
However, MacAskill does acknowledge that fear and worry have a role to play. It’s all a question of balance, she says. “You do need fear to a certain extent, if we’re to have the response that’s needed to tackle the climate emergency. We need that sense of urgency that comes from being in a state of knowing that the things are not good right now. We do need fear, but not to the point where it’s paralyzing and stops action from happening.”
Bold climate action can help alleviate fear and can also help address other societal problems, MacAskill points out. “I like thinking about it as an opportunity to change our systems for the better and sort of tackle multiple issues at once, including social justice issues, because if we have to transform our systems for climate, then we might as well at the same time, be working on all these other issues and just create a just society on all levels. There is a direct connection between poverty and hunger and food scarcity and food insecurity with the climate crisis. In working on climate change, you’re also helping alleviate poverty and vice versa.”
Both MacAskill’s poetry and her public speaking draws a lot of inspiration and grounding from the natural world. “That’s sort of how I always remind myself and recenter myself in terms of why I’m doing all of this,” she says.
In addition to her connection with the natural world, MacAskill says other people from across the world give her hope, especially other young climate strikers. She also mentions her special relationship with her grandmother: “I think my grandmother, from the very beginning played a major role, sort of, in educating me about these sorts of things and providing a lot of inspiration for me because she’s always been involved in activism for a variety of issues over the course of her life.”
“I believe in the power of people,
That’s why I have hope for humanity’s sequel.
I’ve seen the brilliance, the talent, the drive,
My generation’s desperate will to survive.”
-an excerpt of one of Quinn MacAskill’s poems
“I believe in the power of people,
That’s why I have hope for humanity’s sequel.
I’ve seen the brilliance, the talent, the drive,
My generation’s desperate will to survive.”
-an excerpt of one of Quinn MacAskill’s poems
MacAskill ‘s best advice for others who are concerned about the climate emergency is to channel that concern and combine it with existing skills and passions. “For me that ended up turning into these poetry slams that I wrote,” she says. “I already liked writing and then the more I was learning about climate change and things like that, when I combined those two passions, it ended up like leading me to all these amazing opportunities. I think that can be a very powerful combination when you put two passions together.”
