Pathway 4: Multispecies
worldbuilding
Purpose
Imagine and narrate ecological worlds from more-than-human perspectives, exploring multispecies entanglements through collaborative storytelling.
Time
55–80 minutes
Mode
What is this pathway?
This pathway explores multispecies storytelling and polyphonic world construction. Participants are invited to write from different more-than-human perspectives, shifting sensory focus, grammatical voice, and relational logic. Rather than building human-centered worlds populated by others, this pathway invites the fictional co-creation of ecological dynamics from within.
Objective
To explore how ecological worlds can be imagined, narrated, and understood from more-than-human perspectives. This pathway invites participants to step outside of human-centred thinking, experimenting with different voices, sensory logics, and narrative structures to reveal the complexity and interdependence of multispecies life.
It can support creative practices, education, design, environmental awareness, and public decision-making—offering a space to think relationally, question assumptions, and develop greater sensitivity to the entangled realities we inhabit.
EXERCISES
Goal: To practice shifting between human, non-human, and collective narrative voices to explore how different sensory logics transform the same scene. Also serves as a nonlinear multispecies worldbuilding method.
Goal: To build tension and sensory atmosphere around a central event that is never directly described. This practice recentres non-human perception, decentralises plot, and uses absence as a generative force.
Writing Matrix Connections
Use the Guiding Questions for Writing to support each exercise:
Changing Voices → Questions 1, 5, 10
Untold Event → Questions 2, 4, 7
Materials & Tools
Optional extensions
Pathway 2 (Umwelt Exploration)
Pathway 3 (Speculative Drift)
Pathway 5 (Rewriting Through Multispecies Lenses)