Climate Lab Pendle: where are we now?

We're in the midsummer of Climate Lab Pendle.
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It's been our intention to work seasonally, promoting a healthy way of working together that gives space for emergence, and values time for rest and reflection as well as co-learning and delivering. 

Following a Spring and early Summer of establishing the Community Collective; taking part in listening sessions and hosting co-learning events, high summer is our time to make new connections. And so we've been getting out and about and meeting new people over the last few weeks. 

Team members delivered a lively Climate Fresk for local women at Pavillion Cafe, and this weekend we're holding another Fresk with a Quaker group where we will experiment with a circular conversation format in response to this context.
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And we held the public launch of the programme at the Pendle Festival of Culture, where thousands of people were gathering to connect and have fun in Nelson. 

This hasn't happened overnight. There's been lots of things we've all worked together on - there's been a process - but it feels like a safe space to explore." Zoya
Artist-in-Residence Temujen Gunawardena has been distilling and documenting the programme's conversations and ideas.At the Festival of Culture she created a window display; an imaginative family drawing activity, and helped develop a set of prompts for conversations including 1) For you, is Climate Change.... (a hoax, a minor issue, a moderate issue, a serious issue) 2) Where does power lie? 2) If anything, what gives you hope? 3) Where do you get your information from? 
Our partners The People Speak created an interactive performance on the main stage based on the idea of an incoming deluge, where audience members wore animal masks and joined a panel of 'animal experts' to decide who or what we would let onto the ark. 
During the festival, people gathered to chat at the Talkaoke and we felt that there was much more open discussion about the realities of the Climate Crisis on this very warm day, compared to previous years. 
Through all these activities, we were able to explore together our individual relationships to climate change, and find new language to describe what's happening, how we are feeling, how we are being informed and sources of hope for the future.
Our film-maker in residence Graham captured conversations and activities throughout the day, and a cut of these will be shown to the CLP Leadership Collective as part of our season of reflection in the autumn, and will be collectively edited into a film about the public engagement we're doing in Nelson. 
Autumn will involve reflecting on what we've done so far and what we've learnt. It will also provide space for us to go deeper into our own relationships with the topics and the ways of working we are building.
"Taking time out to just watch, and sit, and think. Its strengthening the connective tissue between all of us, between communities. Everything we touch or see, everyone we meet, we're all made of the same elements, but we forget that because some are bigger and some are smaller." - Aaminah
Climate Lab Pendle explores alternative approaches to addressing climate issues at a community level, promoting knowledge, discernment, listening, respect and collective action. 
We're working in partnership with Building Bridges Pendle, The People Speak and Catalista to deliver the programme over the next four years with funding from the National Lottery Community Fund. 
Do get in touch with us if you'd like to hear more, or share your own ways of working differently, by emailing [email protected].