Spotlight Agata Skrzypczyk

Spotlight

AGATA SKRZYPCZYK

Everything began with a story. Research of scientists from the City University of New York has found that people listening to the same story unconsciously synchronize their heartbeat and breathing. This experience can be shared even if people are apart from each other - as long as they are listening to the very same story.

Storytelling taps into the imagination of the collective, the ability to believe in words, carrying them along generations and letting them spark our actions. It all started with the cognitive revolution 70,000 years ago, when Homo Sapiens gained the ability to tell about things that we have never seen, touched, or smelled.

Stories have carried me since I was a kid. I loved telling them, immersing myself in listening to them, watching and feeling. I always liked asking questions and indulging myself fully in listening and finding out how our reality looks through the eyes of my interlocutors. Even though I kicked it off with quite a different career, I was always told that I am a natural journalist. After a series of unplanned incidents, meetings and waves carrying me forward, my destiny has chased me and I became one. I started telling stories about what was the dearest to me - nature.

I found my own relationship with the storytelling. My goal has always been to act as a proxy for words. My mission is to find those with letters burning on their lips, to listen to their words and carry those stories forward. I try to seek for those that are vulnerable, dependable and connected to climate and its changes, and to be their megaphone to the outside world. The climate that we see behind our window may not give us the full information of how our nature is threatened. To get the full picture, we need to look into the past and the future, glance into west and east, peek beyond the northern and southern horizon. Perhaps our collective power of imagination is exactly what we need in order to believe how precious and vulnerable nature is?

I carry out my freelance journalism under the umbrella that I called Hello Earth. I want it to represent a dialogue between us, the residents of Planet Earth and this beautiful sphere that we call home. My storytelling mission has pushed me through many countries, continents and interviews. I told those stories through my live radio show, articles, photographs and videos. I want us to listen to Planet Earth to see what it has to tell us. At the same time, I wish we listen to one another more to understand that someone out there might live in a hotter climate, a regime created by different politicians and in a house made from a weaker brick.

Let’s use our collective imagination to understand that this person, vulnerable to a climate change more than us, might need our help. Let’s listen to their stories and synchronize our heartbeats.

Please contact me in case you have a topic that you would like to share: [email protected]

By Agata Skrzypczyk, 22 January 2022