Sharing Stories, Sharing Vulnerabilities
Tools For Facilitation
We’ve developed a workshop to train Climate Circle facilitators and are always looking to share our project. Along with these supporting materials, we’re happy to help you bring the project to your campus/community.
Introduction to the Project
Even for those of us not directly facing down a flood, drought or forest fire, the climate crisis remains part of our everyday reality – often fueling a vortex of anxiety and stress as we ponder what the present means in relation to this uncertain future. There’s lot of “solutionism” out there that is meant to make us feel good – as if we all can do our part, but these opportunities often ring hollow; our metal straws and refillable containers dont always feel like they are meaningfully addressing the scale and intensity of the crises shaping our present and future.
We’ve been developing a model for small group discussions about the emotional and psychological toll that climate crisis is causing us, individually and together. Climate Circles are a carefully facilitated space to reflect on how the climate crisis feels, how it elicits complex and wrenching emotions, how it triggers memories and frustrations and complicities that we bottle up and doubts that we too often repress. We invite folks to come together to validate and share complicated feelings such as anxiety, guilt, despair, grief, melancholy, nostalgia, fear, and distrust.
The Climate Circles project is closely modeled upon the Climate Psychology Alliance’s Climate Cafes. As a core premise, the Climate Circle is NOT a space for solutions or other sorts of action-oriented directives. That is not because we don’t ultimately want to figure out how and why to act, but because we think that calls to action will be more effective (and perhaps differentially targeted) when we first do the collective work of sorting out how this all is making us feel… together.
We wonder whether a better set of solutions might arise out of communities who are not repressing their vulnerabilities, fears, and anxieties. Might our climate politics be more effective, more resonant, and more responsive if we shed the singular, self-enclosed and narcissistic subject forms that neoliberal capitalism breeds by sharing vulnerabilities and allowing ourselves to be messy and unfinished in and as a collective?
GENERAL OVERVIEW
If you’re interesting in learning more, read over our completed Climate Circle Hand Book, where we’ll explore all aspects of the Climate Circle project in detail. Here’s a top-line summary of some of the most important aspects of the project:
Circles are meant to be intimate gatherings of 8-12 people, with two facilitators (one lead, one secondary) who arrive with a collection of small objects that serve as discussion prompts.
The whole event should take around 2 hours, divided into three sections: an opening that runs for the first half of the time, a second round of discussion that occupies most of the remaining time, and a debriefing in the final 10-15 minutes. After this, the event ends with mingling and sharing in the process of cleaning up.
The event focuses on participants listening to one another share stories and emotional reflections about the climate crisis as it connects to their lives. The secondary facilitator models this by offering to go first, and the lead facilitator jumps in when appropriate, often at the end of the first section. As people share, facilitators intervene to help participants find language to express the emotional dimensions of their stories, and to avoid overly intellectualizing or jumping into calls to action.
In the final, debriefing session, participants assess the climate circle itself, offering feedback for future events. Participants are invited to consider becoming facilitators for future events, beginning with taking on the role of secondary facilitator.
The goal is not to enlist participants in concrete actions or campaigns, but to build community. This could very likely feed into organizing work – and we hope it does! However, the goal of the Climate Circle is to understand the value of sharing climate-related vulnerability on its own terms, not just as a means to some “more important” ends.
Billion Worlds Lab 