Feeling fresk! The climate centre breaking it all down
Interactive group workshop breaks down lengthy UN climate reports into 42 bite-sized card
Friday, 7th February — By Daisy Clague
Anna Hyde (left) with staff from the Greater London Authority after a Climate Fresk workshop at the Islington Climate Centre
WE are told to separate our rubbish, eat less red meat and take shorter showers, but without fully understanding climate change it is hard to know what more we can do about it.
“We’re living in an age of dis- and misinformation, and nobody wants to believe that climate change is happening, that it’s true,” said Anna Hyde, co-founder of the Islington Climate Centre (ICC).
“We’ve seen extreme weather events nearly every day somewhere in the world, but the media isn’t covering it properly.”
Every Tuesday for two-and-a-half years, the ICC has been running Climate Fresk, an interactive group workshop that breaks down lengthy UN climate reports into 42 bite-sized cards.
In three hour sessions, participants arrange the cards in order of cause and effect until they have the full picture of what greenhouse gas pollution is doing to people and planet and a plan for what they’re going to do about it.
“Action is the antidote to despair,” Ms Hyde said.
“It’s important to really understand the implications of climate change – to feel it – and Fresk is the best thing I’ve found so far for communicating that.
“It’s a head, heart and hands workshop, and I think its enduring success is because it’s interactive. People are a bit beyond going to listen to a talk.
“It works for everybody. It’s based on collective intelligence, so you don’t have to have a great educational attainment to understand it.”
Started in France in 2018, nearly two million people have done the workshop worldwide and the ICC has been a pioneer in promoting it in the UK, running sessions for students, councillors, businesses and parents – and even the security guards at Angel Central shopping centre where the ICC is based.
As for the action plans that participants take away with them, there is “something for every speed,” Ms Hyde added.
“From writing to the council to dangling from a gantry, there is something for everybody and a whole gamut of things in between.
“We encourage people not just to take action as individuals, but to use their sphere of influence.
“Maybe you’re already a cyclist, but have you asked your work about their decarbonisation plan? It’s about influence as much as about what you do yourself.”
Anyone who has completed a Fresk can then train to facilitate the sessions themselves.
