A year ago we were preparing to host our first ever climate conversations training workshop. After months of research and design, this was it, we were ready to open the Zoom doors and share our ideas with the world.
We had four fantastic partner orgs on board – UNISON, Tearfund, Parents for Future and Grapevine – and we knew their members and supporters were all passionate about climate, smart, and keen to engage their communities, so the pressure was on to deliver!
Now, having hosted 22 workshops, trained 460 people, and recruited two more partners along the way – the Women’s Institute and The Wildlife Trusts – where do we go from here?
Let’s start with what we know now, that we didn’t necessarily know then.
1. There’s demand (and love) for the training
It’s been amazing to see just how much appetite there is for what we’re offering – workshops are well attended and trainees are enthusiastic and keen to share their own learning and experiences. People tell us they feel uplifted, motivated, hopeful, positive and more confident as a result of the training. They have a deeper understanding of why it’s important to talk about climate and they’re learning practical skills to help them do so. You can view evaluation insights into our second round of pilots here.
2. It works – trainees are starting more conversations
We have great indications that the training is having an impact on our trainees. We’ve supported 19 small groups through the 6-week Challenge – where trainees are encouraged to set themselves weekly targets for conversations – and between them they’ve had 1,387 of them. Our independent evaluator, Hidden Depths Research, also found that these conversations are reaching people outside of the climate movement: “Where climate activists have adopted a more empathetic approach, they can succeed in bringing people into conversations on climate that wouldn’t have occurred otherwise.” You can read the full report here.
3. We need a different model
While we were testing the training it was important for us to be as close to the action as possible, that’s why between us on the team we hosted all the workshops, gave all the live talks and trained and supervised our volunteer Challenge hosts. Doing this enabled us to respond to feedback and make changes quickly. There’s also no substitute for being in the room with trainees – listening to them, answering their questions and getting their thoughts in real time. But, we’re a tiny team and if we continue delivering training ourselves, the reality is that we’re going to be a big bottleneck on future growth. We need a model that makes it much easier for us to scale.
So now we know that we’ve designed something that people value and enjoy and that motivates and equips them to have climate conversations, we’re spending the rest of the year getting ourselves into a good position to relaunch – bigger and better – in 2025.
What does this look like? Well, we’re:
Recruiting freelance facilitators.
It’s time for us to hand over the reins to people who can take the training to the next level. Recruitment has already started, and by next year we’ll have a small team ready to work with our partners and their members / supporters. We’ve had a fantastic response to our call out so far – seriously, so many great people – and we can’t wait to bring their expertise on board.
Commissioning new video content.
The days of live talks during the workshops are over. We can’t clone Alex and so we’re doing the next best thing – commissioning a series of animated films that we hope will be both beautiful and engaging. Thanks to our trainees, we know which parts of the talks really resonate with them and we’re using this as a guide for what to include. This is another benefit of ‘being in the room’ – if we had invested in these videos a year ago, instead of doing the talks live, there’s no doubt we would have made mistakes on the content; now we can be much more confident about our approach.
Designing a conversations brand and website.
It’s time for this project to have an identity distinct from Larger Us to help propel it forward. It needs to have mass appeal and so accessibility and clarity of purpose is important. A fresh new brand and website will help us to create a bold and inviting ‘shop window’ so potential partners and trainees know exactly what they’re signing up for. We’ll be able to communicate more clearly about the thrust and impact of the training and speak directly to those we want to engage.
Designing a comms toolkit for our trainees.
Many of our trainees are keen to know ‘what’s next?’ or want to integrate the conversations training with their volunteer work for the org they support. We also know that political decision makers such as MPs and local councillors often underestimate their constituents’ appetite for climate action. We’re hoping to tackle both these challenges with the development of a simple comms toolkit for trainees, so they can tell the local media and political leaders that hundreds of climate conversations are happening all over their community. Our hope is that this will help to amplify the political impact of the conversations by letting politicians know about the political demand that’s out there for bold policy decisions.
Alongside all this, we’re continuing to:
– Deepen our relationship with our existing delivery partner orgs, and reach out to potential new ones. We already know we’ll be working with some partners again (it’s such a vote of confidence that orgs continue to put their trust in us) and with the National Trust for the first time. We’re delighted to have many conversations lined up in the diary with our eyes on 2025. If you’re interested, do let us know!
– Co-host the climate conversations Community of Practice with our friends at Climate Outreach. This is a group of orgs committed to understanding more about the impact of conversations in campaigning and asking questions about how we can grow the evidence base for its effectiveness.
– Find funding. Like most non-profits out there, we’re looking for funders who share our vision and will invest in the team to help us make it reality. If you’re a funder reading this, our DMs are open 🙂
This is a lot to manage as a team of two, not least because we’re continuing to research and share other big ideas (check out Alex’s new Substack), so we’re so grateful for the additional support of our brilliant senior adviser, Ben Margolis, our Chair, Liz Oldfield, and all the rest of our Board.
That’s all for now!