Whilst a clear majority of Europeans are aware the climate is changing and support climate action in principle, they are much more lukewarm in their support for specific policies. And especially policies with obvious trade-offs
(https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/publications/from-climate-change-awareness-to-climate-crisis-action). The same goes for most European politicians and policy-makers. Different communications strategies are needed to build public and
political support for the radical, transformational societal level changes climate breakdown demands. New research from
the UK (https://framingclimatejustice.org/) concludes that focusing on solidarity and shared humanity is the most effective frame for getting people to accept these difficult choices and support more whole-heartedly systemic and justice-based climate action. In testing, messages emphasising solidarity were found to be the most helpful. The research also recommends focusing on positive, hopeful stories to prompt people to feel that it’s possible to act. This project will take these research findings and apply them internationally – targeting EU policy-makers and citizens with solidarity-framed stories before, during, and after the 2021 UN climate talks (COP26). Solidarity is a stated founding value of the European Union. We will highlight positive examples of solidarity-based EU climate action – and also call-out insufficient proposals
and lack of action which don’t fulfill the EU stated values. We expect the vast majority of communications around COP26to use emergency frames, and advocate technical responses. Our stories will provide alternative solidarity-based hopefulmessages, and just solutions. We will work with artists via a ‘creative call’ to produce storytelling materials that break-the-mould of typical NGO communications. The project will finance pitches from artists, and the commission of artwork from the selected artist(s). The resulting materials will be used in the build-up to, during, and following COP26.
They will be broadly distributed in ?8 European countries (translated where necessary), taking advantage of public attention on the summit, including EU decisionmakers.