Full-Circle Workplan

Crisis and Opportunity

The Crisis

A time-series graph showing global temperature anomalies since 1850. The graph rises from approximately zero in 1940 to 1.6º C in 2024.
Berkeley Earth’s Global Temperature Report for 2024, published January 10, 2025

The Opportunity

This workshop gives us an opportunity to imagine, and thus see, the challenge as it really is. That is a heavy lift. It also provides us the opportunity imagine communications-based solutions that could achieve a necessary goal. According to the United Nations Emissions Gap 2024 report, in order to limit global warming to 1.5ºC, we would have to cut global emissions by 57% by 2035. But according to the graph above, that 1.5ºC limit may already have been surpassed.

The Full-Circle Climate Communication Workshop, a CREATIVE RESPONSE TO AN URGENT CRISIS, draws on the robust scientific project, iHARP. It also draws upon the disciplines that focus on human behavior, policy, communication, and culture. We have an opportunity to imagine realistic strategy ideas with the ambitious aspiration of achieving the carbon emission reductions that are needed.

A radial diagram with 8 different-colored bubbles around a center. The bubbles are labeled "Climate Phenomenon; Science Findings, Human Impact, Human Action Contributors, Change Theory, Communication Theory, Communication Artifact or Action, and Evaluation." In the center is a purple circle labeled "Co-Imagine a Plan" and "Co-Create the Plan." Inside that circle is a white circle labeled "Document and Articulate the Plan."
A visualization of the work plan, developed by the Full-Circle Climate Workshop planning team, to help guide the work groups during the workshop.

Workshop Goals (reiterated):

  • Imagine and articulate communication strategies creative and insightful enough to shift policymaking and people’s individual choices to sufficiently reduce carbon and consequently, climate change.
  • Model, in a scalable way, the broadly transdisciplinary, impact-oriented work universities can do to optimize the impact of their research.
  • Experience the transformative practice of integrating your knowledge and expertise with that of others whose work is very different from your own but equally essential for meeting challenges and seizing opportunities of our time.

Full-Circle Working Hypothesis

Integrating the diversity of thinking, knowledge, methods, and expertise among the domains of the sciences, humanities, and arts, might increase the likelihood of creative innovation in climate media communication in order to make it more effective at curbing climate change.

Objectives and Work Plan for the Workgroups

First and foremost, the intention and experience of the workgroups is one of integrating your knowledge, expertise, and ways of thinking with the others in your group to create a transdisciplinary workflow in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. As useful as it will be to discuss your own work in your own discipline as a reference point, this experience is not about that. It is not a conference in that regard. Instead it is about the work we do together.

  1. Your Workgroup. Your home base will be a group of 5-7 people. The workshop planners have done their best to select these groups to distribute the knowledge and expertise of the participants. They are imperfect. There will be some floaters—people who check in with all the groups. You can make inquiries to people from different groups. Go to the participant page to locate those with the expertise you need. If you have not submitted your own bio and headshot for that page, please send them immediately to Hemanth Chelluri, at hemantc1@umbc.edu. By jumping into discussions with your workgroup, get to know those in your workgroup and how they imagine the climate change crisis.
    • Names, where are these colleagues from?
    • Expertise?
    • Experiences?
    • How do they choose to interact with one another?
    • How do they think and talk about the climate change crisis?
  2. Document and articulate your thinking, content, and ideas as you go using paper, markers, whiteboards, digital tools, and phone cameras.
  3. Imagine, frame, and structure the major components of a promising, actionable climate communication strategy to increase the influence of climate change research on our collective and individual habits, choices, and actions. In the end, others must be able to understand your work in order to build upon it. The plan must account for the considerations listed below using circular icons from the diagram above.
  4. Schedule of workgroup sessions. There are 11, hour-long workgroup sessions scheduled Tuesday through Thursday. After the first session, which should be meeting your colleagues and a broad-ranging discussion, consider using sessions 2-9 to focus mainly, but not exclusively on the components listed below, one per session, in order. Or, consider cycling through the whole list throughout the 8 sessions, in more and more depth with each pass. Just like the expertise of your workgroup, these components should come together to create and integrated whole. With either of these plans, consider using session 10 to focus entirely on publishing your work to Google Sites. Session 11, on Friday, for one last pass and tweaks before the presentations to the whole group that will follow. There are many ways to do that and despite these suggestions, workgroups can organize their time as they see fit.

Workplan components:

1. Green circle Climate Phenomenon

      • Something that occurs or will occur
      • Caused by a warming climate
      • Phenomena—can be more than one

2. Yellow-green circle Science Findings

      • What findings tell us about the phenomenon.
      • How does it work?
      • What causes it?

3. Yellow circle Human Impact

      • The population(s) that will be affected
      • Where they are located.

 

4. Orange circle Human Contributor(s)

      • What do people do that is a key contributor(s)Clim?
        • Voting?
        • Choices/ Habits?
          • Housing
          • Transportation
          • Diet
          • Discretionary (vacations; recreation…)
          • Consumption
      • Who does it?
      • Why do they do it?
        • What need or desire does it serve?

5. Red circle Change Theory

      • What could they do instead?
      • What might cause them to switch?
        • Regulation?
        • Changes in beliefs, attitudes, and intentions
      • Social science
        • Who is the population?
          • Are “they,” us?
          • How do they define themselves?
          • What do they need?
          • What do they want?
        • What does social science theory suggest might be promising approaches to changing those actions?
          • Laws, policies, regulations?
          • Voluntary changes motivated by
            • economic incentives?
            • fear of harm and loss?
            • evolving socio-culture values?
            • evolving social and cultural norms?
            • ease and expedience?
            • appeal to identity?
            • other?

6. Violet circle Communication Theory

      • Beyond informing clearly…
      • Don’t assume best interests
      • Rhetorical approach
      • Stories
        • Personal
        • Emotional
        • Counter narratives
        • Reinterpret cultural values
        • Positive v. negative. Hope v. fear

7. Blue circle Communication Asset or Action

      • Media form
        • Audience
        • Venue
        • Technology
        • Design
        • Aesthetic
      • Performance
        • What will be done?
        • By whom?
        • When, where?
      • Other actions

8. blue circle Evaluation

      • Best indicator of change
      • Research method (sketch)

9. Publish your plan on our Google Sites project page. The person who set this up and can answer your questions about it is Rebecca Williams: rmwillia@umbc.edu, who is participating in the workshop. This is a sketch of a promising idea. A frame; and armature; some structure—not a finished plan. It is a resource for future efforts—yours and others.

To Keep in Mind

  1. Research…in real-time, as you work: Perplexity; Google Scholar; etc.
  2. Make joy. Just because we are solving the most pressing problem facing life on earth, including ours, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be fun! If it hurts you’re doing it wrong.
  3. Make a mess. This will be a very active place over the next 3 days. Noise. Running around. Spewing out drawings, diagrams, and lists. Chaos with a purpose and a focus. Your intense work will be punctuated by talks that allow you to sink into one of the relevant domains. Don’t be afraid of ambiguity and allowing a “yard sale” of pieces to emerge in the process. Bring it together toward the end.
  4. You are each essential. You are here because you bring value. Bring the value. Be active. Think out loud with your group. Don’t sit back. Lean forward. Make an integrated effort with an energy of its own.
  5. Be realistic. There is no limit to how complex, nuanced, intricate, and sophisticated a media communication project can be. You, on the other hand, have 10 hours.
  6. Future efforts: You are designing the bones/ the armature/ the structure, to be pursued and fleshed out later. These are seedlings that can be taken back to your universities and elsewhere, and pursued.

We are not alone

 

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