The Climate Communication Project is a collaboration between academics and practitioners working on public engagement with climate change. Through an ‘audit’ of UK capacity and expertise on climate change communication, a synthesis of key research findings, and by listening to a range of community groups’ views and needs, we’re producing a new resource that will help catalyse public engagement with climate change.
Over the course of 2018, we will be delivering three main strands of work
1. Auditing the skills and capabilities of UK climate engagement practitioners.
The Climate Communication Project will host a series of in person workshops, online meetings and a rapid response survey to collect information from our project team and the wider community. Feedback from experts across the UK will be used to produce an evaluation of ‘what works’, ‘why’ and ‘how to upskill our capabilities’ when it comes to public engagement with climate change. This process will also allow us to map out the people and organisations across the UK with expertise dealing with climate change engagement. The full audit report will be published online, and available on our website.
2. Identifying audiences, networks and co-production channels.
The Climate Communication Project will collaborate with established public community networks across the UK to find out more about their needs and potential barriers to discussing scientific topics relating to climate. Three workshops will be held in 2018, two in Manchester and one in Bristol. The community groups involved are the Avonmouth Community Centre, and faith groups in Manchester via the Manchester Climate Change Agency and Refugee Action. Experiences from our co-production workshops will be posted on this website.
3. Resource synthesis
There is a wealth of research and resources on public engagement with climate change, but this can often include contradictory advice and disparate approaches which have not been fully evaluated. The Climate Communication Project will carry out a process of expert elicitation (using in-person workshops) plus a rapid synthesis of existing research, will produce a set of consensus and confidence statements on public engagement with climate change. The resulting resource will be available on this website for practitioners to access.
Great project. A key question is what insights from the UK could be applied elswhere, too.