Funding secured for Climate Lab Pendle

In-Situ has secured £429,000 in funding from The National Lottery Community Fund’s Reaching Communities programme to continue Climate Lab Pendle, following a pilot delivered in Nelson with Pendle Borough Council in 2023. The funding will support the next phase of the programme over four years, from 2026 to 2029.

Climate Lab Pendle will work creatively and collaboratively with local people to develop local responses to the intersecting crises of climate change, inequality and hate. The programme is designed as a mass engagement initiative, promoting knowledge, discernment, listening, respect and collective action at a community level in Nelson, Pendle.

Local residents will form a Community Collective, building on previous work In-Situ has undertaken through This Is Nelson and earlier climate engagement work with Pendle Borough Council. The Collective will work in partnership with In-Situ, Building Bridges Pendle, The People Speak and Catalista to deliver the programme over the next four years.

Initial activity will focus on establishing the Community Collective, who will define the principles that guide the programme. The project will then use Climate Fresks, a globally-used climate education tool based on up-to-date climate science, alongside Talkaokes, a pop-up talk show format built around a donut-shaped table where people can share views in a facilitated and safe environment, to explore the themes. Artists and subject experts will be involved to explore these complex and interconnected issues in a way that everyone can understand and contribute towards.

Climate Lab Pendle aims to model alternative approaches to addressing climate issues at a community level. The programme will challenge misinformation and disinformation, and use public spaces to explore new narratives. It will address not only the politics of the climate crisis, but also the emotions people experience while navigating it.

The project has been designed to emphasise wellbeing and safety, valuing reflection, seasonal energy, sustainability and healthy working boundaries. It will also work in dialogue with Art of Small Talk in Islamabad, Pakistan, to share learning across continental boundaries.

For In-Situ, this will be the first time its internal flat leadership model has been extended to include a Community Collective as part of the leadership of a creative programme, with funding allocated to cover participants’ time. In-Situ thanks National Lottery players for making the project possible.

Tom Deakon of Catalista, one of the project’s partners, said:

“We are living through a time of intersecting crises, playing out at both global and local levels. The entanglement of growing inequality alongside escalating divisions and hate in our societies can feel overwhelming, all exacerbated by the deepening climate crisis. Climate Lab Pendle is a vital opportunity for us to explore healthy and connective ways to face these very real challenges together, finding our collective voice and decision making power to be part of shaping the positive future we wish to inhabit.”

He added:

“Climate Lab Pendle offers us the vital opportunity to both lean into the discomfort of facing the entangled crisis of inequality, hatred and climate breakdown and to reach toward finding connective ways to process this entanglement. This project sits on the exploratory edge of how to live both healthily and respectfully in this time of deep uncertainty, and is part of growing our collective resilience and community cohesion that will empower a clear community voice to steer local decision making.”

Details of how to get involved will be available on www.in-situ.org.uk.