Nature and Climate Communication event (Oct 2022) – Resources
Welcome to our resource page for the ‘Nature and Climate: Communication that Inspires Action’ event that took place in October 2022. You will find a video recording of the event; all the speakers’ PowerPoint slides and their website links; resources from the interactive workshops; and useful links posted in the Zoom chat during the event.
Video of Speakers’ Presentations
You can view the video below. Or follow this link to watch on YouTube which has timestamps in the video description so that you can skip to a particular presentation.
Speaker Powerpoints and Links
Diana Pound
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diana-pound-cenv-fcieem-88737b21/
‘Transforming the way we tell stories – from issues to action’
(based on a paper written by Kris de Meyer)
‘Being Inspiring’
Livvy Drake
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/livvy-drake-49105252/
Website: https://www.sustainablesidekicks.com/resources/behaviour-change/
‘Inspiring Action with Behavioural Science’
Charly Cox
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charly-cox-co-founder-climate-change-coaches-907bb719/
Website: https://climatechangecoaches.com/
‘Practical skills to overcome common psychological roadblocks to creating change’
Interactive Workshop Resources
1. Action Storytelling
Learn how to create action-based stories. In this workshop, participants planned an article for a farmers’ publication about transitioning from high-input farming towards a more regenerative model. Rather than taking an ‘issues-based’ approach focussing on the the negative effects of intensive agriculture, participants planned an ‘action-based story’. An action-based story shows a person or group solving environmental/climate challenges one short-term goal at a time and aims to inspire agency in the reader.
Our story in the workshop was about ‘Fred’ (fictional for the purposes of this workshop!). He used to be in agrochemicals, but has bought a farm and seen the effect these chemicals had on wildlife. Wanting to see more wildlife on his farm, he set off on a journey toward regenerative agriculture. The story starts with a realistic assessment of where Fred is now and progresses along a series of short-term goals and ending with his overarching ambitions achieved, exploring the support Fred receives, barriers he faces, and his motivations for carrying on along the way.
You can use the planning template below to create an action-based story about any group or person.
Find the plan of Fred’s action-based story here.
(You can zoom in and out of the plan using the controls in the bottom right corner, and can move around the screen by holding down your right-hand mouse button and dragging)
2. Go EAST
The ‘EAST’ technique is a tool that can be used to plan campaigns for behaviour change. EAST stands for Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely and allows you to address the different barriers to behaviour change as you plan to inspire people to take action.
During the workshop, participants thought about how to approach a a behaviour change campaign for pro-bin usage in a protected area using the EAST technique. They started by thinking of suggestions for one category at a time: E – ways to make bin use easy for visitors, A – ways to make using a bin more attractive, S – ways to reinforce using the bin as a social norm, and T – how to communicate and position the information and bins at a time and place where visitors think about the behaviour.
You can apply the EAST technique to any campaign you are planning around behaviour change to ensure it is Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely. (Thank you to Livvy Drake for providing the resources).
Filled-in EAST template from the workshop
3. Green Conversations
How to communicate with friends, family and colleagues to inspire action. We look at two types: conversations with people at the start of ‘becoming greener’ and conversations with people who are stuck in a scarcity mindset. There are suggestions about how to guide these conversations and example phrases that you can use. This is all covered in more detail in the powerpoint slides. (Thank you to Charly Cox for providing the resources about scarcity mindset).
Green Conversations powerpoint slides
4. Hero’s Journey
What are your next steps towards communicating to inspire action? You can use the template below to reflect on where you are at on your own personal journey in communicating to inspire action., and to think about what your next steps could be.
Perhaps our event will feature in your own Hero’s Journey, but it could different stages for each person. For some, it may be attending our event was stage 1. Call to Action, for others it may have been stage 3. Finding Allies, or for others stage 8.
In the workshop, participants filled out a Hero’s Journey for an imaginary character ‘Wattson’ which gives examples of the kind of things which might be included in each stage of the journey. (Thank you to Diana Pound for hand-drawing her own version of the Hero’s Journey).
Filled-in Hero’s Journey from the workshop
Useful Links from the Zoom Chat
- Climate Outreach. Has some great resources on diversifying who is in front of and behind the lens for climate images https://climateoutreach.org/resources/
- Behaviour Change with farmers around water quality. We (Natural England) have worked on leading and inspiring behaviour change on water quality with farmers in England since 2006 through the Catchment Sensitive Farming Project. You can read the latest evaluation report here: http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/4538826523672576. This included social science and practical understanding of farm sectors and their values and drivers which are all taken on board when engaging farmers and developing a plan to do this.
- Behaviour change – plastic use. Covid was a really interesting “live experiment” for what drives behaviours – we did a study on people’s plastic use while “out and about” during the first year of the pandemic in the UK, and found evidence for a number of drivers which provided information for what the solutions might be – for example, use of plastic bottles was higher when people could not go into establishments to refill. Therefore, we suggested more refill points are needed outside, in public spaces “Drivers of public plastic (mis)use — New insights from changes in single-use plastic usage during the Covid-19 pandemic” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969722047702?via%3Dihub
- ‘Design for Planet’ Festival 2022. This is worth visiting: https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-mission/design-for-planet-1/design-for-planet-festival-2022/
- Global Community of systems innovators. Recommend joining: https://www.systemsinnovation.network
- Book recommendation – Sustainable hedonism: https://www.resilience.org/resilience-author/orsolya-lelkes/
- Link to buy Charly Cox’s book: https://www.mheducation.co.uk/climate-change-coaching-the-power-of-connection-to-create-climate-action-9780335250059-emea-group.
- Link to Climate Change Coaching course: https://climatechangecoaches.com/professionals/.
- Future Frequency workshop method. This is free to use: https://www.sitra.fi/en/projects/futures-frequency/#
- Bristol Climate Heroes. We’ve been working on a series of climate action stories from people across Bristol, a lot of the people talk about they started doing X then thought ‘I could do Y’ too.. https://www.bristolclimatehub.org/bristol-climate-heroes/
- Green your pension. This is a good resource to direct people to re divesting pensions etc https://makemymoneymatter.co.uk/