Just as some events are more than project activities, some evenings are more than dates on a calendar. They are opportunities to bring people, ideas, and all the beautiful things built over the years together in one place: collaborations that have grown into friendships, conversations that have sparked new ideas, and shared moments that remind us why we keep going. For us, the evening of 7 October was one such occasion, when we presented the collection Homo Climaticum – the Balkans at cultural centre Ribnica in Podgorica, while also celebrating ten years of Zero Waste Montenegro.
We wanted this to be more than just a book launch, or simply a celebration of an anniversary. We wanted to talk about the stories we tell, the world we live in, the futures we imagine, and what we can do to ensure they do not remain words on a page. That is why we began the evening by reflecting on the power of words, both written and spoken.
More than 130 stories and poems were submitted to the regional competition organised as part of the STORY – The Story of the 1.5°C Limit project. From these, a collection of 28 selected works by authors from Montenegro, Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina was created. Each work explores the climate crisis in its own way, but not merely through rising temperatures, extreme weather events, or visions of some distant, imagined world. Instead, we find human relationships, family memories, the fear of loss, questions to which we have no answers, and the hope that the future is not predetermined.
When we talk about climate change through stories, it suddenly feels closer. It becomes easier to imagine a world without the winters we remember, what it means to grow up with the consequences of decisions we never made ourselves, or what it looks like to try to preserve something we have long taken for granted. Perhaps this is where the power of storytelling lies: it allows us to feel what statistics tell us, but what can remain distant, abstract, and intangible amid the constant flow of information.
That evening, authors Anes Batilovic, Maja Petrovic, Helena Jovanovic, Bojana Uskokovic, and Petra Gavric brought us closer to their worlds. As we listened to excerpts from their stories and poems, we encountered more than literary characters, distant pasts, uncertain presents, and imagined futures. We felt the questions and concerns that already exist in our world, even when they are difficult to confront. Then, we took a step from literature into reality.
Later in the evening, we continued the conversation with our dear colleagues and fellow campaigners Andrijana Micanovic (Montenegrin Ecologists Society), Ivana Coguric Rasovic (Ecopatriotizam), Vanja Cicmil (Zero Waste Montenegro), and Maja Popovic (Ecopatriotizam). We talked about nature conservation, activism, experiences from the field, writing, and all those moments when the desire for change encounters obstacles but continues to endure. Because behind every change are people who have chosen not to remain mere observers. People who come together, ask questions, seek solutions, make mistakes, try again, and believe that their efforts are never in vain.
That is why it was important to us that the evening did not end with applause and the closing of a book. As a symbolic gesture, we invited those present to leave a message in our time capsule and answer the question: What would you like someone to read ten years from now? Perhaps someone had a wish, a question, a promise, or a thought they wanted to preserve for the future. For us, these messages will be more than memories of one evening. They will be a gentle reminder that the future does not belong to someone else, and that we are all shaping it, in different ways, already. We hope that in ten years, when we open our time capsule, we will be able to look back and see that we did not simply imagine a better future, but took steps together to bring it closer.
Thank you to everyone who was part of this gathering: the authors who shared their stories with us, our guests who opened up space for an important conversation, everyone who worked on the collection and the STORY project, and all those who joined us to celebrate these special occasions together. There was certainly a lot to celebrate.
Photography: Bojana Vukcevic
The event was organised as part of the project “THE STORY OF THE 1.5°C LIMIT – Solutions and Storytelling of Youth from the Western Balkans”, co-funded by the European Union and the Ministry of Regional Investment Development and Cooperation with NGOs. The main goal of the STORY project is to strengthen the capacities of young people and youth organisations across the Western Balkans, enabling them to understand and advocate for solutions to the environmental crisis through civic education and art, particularly literature.