The Poet on the Ship | Creativity & Climate Justice with Ben Kalina and James McKinney

Documentary filmmaker and Drexel professor Ben Kalina links filmmaking with climate concerns and his short Higher Ground - an exploration of chronic flooding and environmental injustice in the Eastwick neighborhood of Philadelphia. Kalina’s film Plan C for Civilization examines solar geoengineering and its ethical dilemmas, urging critical public reasoning and collective agency. Music professor James McKinney discusses using music and multimedia to build empathy, including producing Max Gallagher’s song “The Flood” into a VR experience using Unreal Engine, spatial audio, interactive storytelling, and real flood-risk data.