Climate Lab Pendle receives National Lottery Reaching Communities Funding

Climate Lab Pendle will work with local people to develop local responses to the crises of climate change, inequality and hate – designed as a mass engagement initiative at a community level in Nelson.

Residents will form a Community Collective, building on previous work In-Situ has undertaken through This Is Nelson and earlier climate engagement work with Pendle Council. The Collective will work in partnership with In-Situ, Building Bridges Pendle, The People Speak and Catalista to deliver the programme over the next four years.

Initial activity will focus on establishing the Community Collective, who will define the principles that guide the programme. The project will then use Climate Fresks, a climate education tool based on up-to-date climate science, alongside Talkaokes, a pop-up talk show format where people can share views.

Artists and subject experts will be involved to explore these complex issues in a way that everyone can understand and contribute towards.

Tom Deakon of Catalista, one of the project’s partners, said: “We are living through a time of intersecting crises, playing out at both global and local levels. The entanglement of growing inequality alongside escalating divisions and hate in our societies can feel overwhelming, all exacerbated by the deepening climate crisis.

“Climate Lab Pendle is a vital opportunity for us to explore healthy and connective ways to face these very real challenges together, finding our collective voice and decision making power to be part of shaping the positive future we wish to inhabit.”

Climate Lab Pendle aims to model alternative approaches to addressing climate issues at a community level, and will challenge misinformation and disinformation. It will address not only the politics of the climate crisis, but also the emotions people experience while navigating it.

The project will also work in dialogue with Art of Small Talk in Islamabad, Pakistan, to share learning across continental boundaries.

Tom added: “Climate Lab Pendle offers us the vital opportunity to both lean into the discomfort of facing the entangled crisis of inequality, hatred and climate breakdown and to reach toward finding connective ways to process this entanglement.”

Details of how to get involved will be available on www.in-situ.org.uk.