Location: California

Research confirms that humans are story-based creatures. We live in narrative contexts, and information presented in narrative form often has a deeper, longer-lasting impact on our understanding and behavior. But is the climate advocacy community doing enough to leverage our best storytelling media to connect to and activate new (and existing) audiences? And for members of the creative community, how can we ensure our work will result in meaningful social impact? Join the teams from this Lab and the Climate Story Lab team (a project of Exposure Labs and Doc Society) with three creatives working in film, virtual reality, and digital media, for a webinar exploring how to effectively tie together critical climate stories and real social impact.

This conversation highlights findings from two reports focused on how the climate advocacy community can support equitable climate resilience (the ability of communities to adapt and thrive in the face of impacts from climate change) in climate policies and programs, as advocates nationwide are pushed to think beyond a frame of “simply” climate mitigation: Making Equity Real in Climate Adaptation and Community Resilience Policies and Programs: A Guidebook and Mapping Resilience: A Blueprint for Thriving in the Face of Climate Disasters.

From September 2018 to June 2019, the California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA) conducted message testing to develop valuable analysis about how to most effectively mobilize environmental justice communities to increase long-term, persistent engagement on climate issues and potentially inform their programmatic work.