Knowledge Co-Creation and Blue Equity: Reimagining Ocean Futures in Hamilton, Canada

Abstract

The workshop “Knowledge Co-Creation and Blue Equity: Reimagining Ocean Futures” was held on 10–12 June 2026 at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, as a deliverable of the UN Ocean Decade Blue Catalyst (bLYSs) project and an endorsed Activity of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. Organized through the ongoing collaboration between UiT The Arctic University of Norway and McMaster University’s Mary Heersink School of Global Health and Social Medicine, the three-day event brought together children, families, researchers, artists, and community partners to explore a guiding question: Can someone love the ocean if they have never seen it?

The first day opened with a puppet show featuring hand-crocheted puppets and interweaving stories from Gaza, Sinai, and Songea, followed by four co-creation stations where children illustrated the story, continued it with their own local waters, wrote letters to the children whose stories inspired the performance, and explored connections between food, water, and memory. On the second day, guided by the principles of Equity-Based Co-Creation (EqCC), adult participants engaged in multi-step collaborative storytelling that culminated in one collective narrative, further developed through storyboarding, script writing, and letter writing. The third day concluded the workshop with a Forest Therapy walk to Cootes Paradise, inviting participants to slow down, reflect, and reconnect the themes of storytelling and co-creation with the local land and water.

This report documents the background, methodology, and outcomes of the workshop, illustrating how storytelling, puppetry, and participatory knowledge creation can advance ocean literacy and blue equity, and how stories — like water — travel across borders, languages, and generations, connecting communities in a shared love and responsibility for the ocean and more just and hopeful ocean futures.