I’ve worked with a range of clients – including national charities, a multi-sectoral research programme, regional stakeholder partnerships, specialist sustainability service providers, creative practitioners and others – to:
Engage artists and experts on the creative responses to climate change:
- managing events for a diverse mix of artists and professionals in different artistic sectors, with leading sustainability experts;
- organising intensive summits for writers and climate change experts to come together for discussions, workshops, creative challenges, networking and entertainment;
- supporting delivery of commissions for new creative work, including in design of the brief, processing applications, serving on the judging panels, and delivery of a pdf anthology of the final work;
- chairing an authors’ discussion panel on ‘writing climate change’ at the 2017 Hay Literary Festival.
Investigate experiences on collaborative research on complex problems, uncovering both pitfalls and success factors:
- interviewing researchers and stakeholders across interdisciplinary research projects on complex challenges;
- helping develop clear recommendations for project designers, funders and participants as research environments become increasingly focused on engaging multiple sectors and delivering meaningful impact.
Explore local environmental knowledge, imagination and humanities-based approaches to complement expert scientific and professional knowledge, so reducing risks of conflict:
- devising and piloting workshops to test ways to engage different forms of knowledge of local environmental change;
- adapting research from an academic-practitioner network and other social science and humanities approaches to help local teams and partner organisations explore the places they manage through different perspectives;
- using imaginative historic timelines, defamiliarising and reinterpreting ‘expert’ language, and storyboarding future scenarios to develop insights and dialogues that can open up new possibilities with communities, interest groups and visitors.
Advise on building impactful researcher-stakeholder dialogue to promote adaptation responses to climate change:
- investigating evolving knowledge exchange and mobilisation practices;
- identifying new opportunities for networks to keep abreast of, make use of and help shape the rapidly growing volume of academic research into climate change impacts and adaptation.
Run successful and enjoyable consultation events involving multiple perspectives:
- facilitating breakout groups and exercises to bring diverse expertise, perspectives and interests into the room;
- ensuring a safe and trusted environment for all voices to contribute and be respected.
In 2017, I launched ClimateCultures as a free online platform to explore and inspire ‘creative conversations for the Anthropocene’:
- surveying a large and diverse network of artists, curators and researchers to assess their interest, what they would need and how they might engage with the site, and researching other sites and groups;
- designing and creating features and content for the new site, launching in March 2017;
- recruiting a growing community of members and developing content with them through posts and a series of creative contributions to a unique feature, A History of the Anthropocene in 50 Objects;
- continuing to contribute my own content, including reviews of books and events, and experience from my freelance and other work.
I manage ClimateCultures alongside my freelance work, seeing these as a dialogue between complementary activities, and adding a new dimension to the support I offer.