Our Soaps have huge role to play, encouraging people to change their behaviour by building community energy into their story lines
Editorial
Does energy have a part to play in Soap Storylines?
- Energy is real. It is huge and the people suffering from lack of it are devastating. 39,000 people a year, in the UK, die from cold related issues. They can’t heat their homes. They are choosing between heat or eat. If it is not directly touching viewers it has indirectly affected them and it is an easy access into the climate narrative.
- Community solar projects are nearly always led Matriarchal led. Predominantly by strong, jovial and charismatic woman between the ages of 40- 74. She has lived and knows everyone and everyone’s business. Which character might that be in your soap?
- We cannot produce all our energy and food in the urban areas we inhabit, but they are and can be twinned with rural areas that can produce them. This opens two discussions; the practical one about how our consumption has impacts on rural areas. As well as the other on how programmes talk about the urbanisation of Britain and can empower through connecting the urban to the rural, and the rural to the urban.