Story as Strategy

Image: There Will Come Soft Rains (c) Ella Dowling Gubb

As London Climate Action Week comes to a close, there has been a lot of buzz about climate storytelling and the role of culture in unlocking progress on climate. It’s encouraging to see growing momentum around something we at Climate Spring have long been championing, along with our other allies in this space: if we want to change the future, we have to start by changing the story.

I founded Climate Spring because, after decades working across climate policy, politics, business, the UN and philanthropy, one truth became impossible to ignore: we were losing the story battle.

Again and again, I saw strong climate strategies fail to take root in the public imagination. We were trying to sow seeds of change - whether new policy proposals or campaign messages - in a polluted soil - an information ecosystem saturated with toxic narratives that justified the extractive status quo.¹

In our news, in entertainment, on social media, we are flooded with content that upholds the narratives that the natural world exists for our extraction, that we need industrial agriculture to feed the world, and that fossil fuels are the foundation of progress and prosperity.

This worldview is still dominant, even as of course science tells us the opposite is now true.

Nature is not a commodity - it is our kin. We literally are ecosystems ourselves, our health deeply intertwined with the natural world. Fossil fuels are no longer driving development - they are holding us hostage to a polluting, inefficient energy system when, in turn, renewable energy and new technology offers us a chance to upgrade our creaking, dirty, inefficient Victorian housing.

Meanwhile, evidence shows that industrial agriculture drives biodiversity collapse while delivering a fragile food supply with declining nutritional value, while nearly 80% of the world’s population is fed by small-scale farming and regenerative farmers are producing food while recovering species.

If we want a regenerative economy and a future worth living in, we need to start by changing the soil. And that means changing the narratives upheld through the stories we tell in our popular culture.

This doesn’t just mean creating lots of new climate-focused content. It means fundamentally rethinking how popular culture either reinforces or challenges the values and assumptions driving the climate crisis.

That’s the work we do at Climate Spring.

We partner with the creative industries to shift climate narratives at scale. From adventurous and humorous to complex and emotionally resonant stories -  across genres, from thrillers and comedies to cooking shows and house renovation formats, we aim to change the public conversation on climate. Because climate is not just something we live with - it is something we live in.

We do this by collaborating with leading production companies and broadcasters, unlocking investment and catalysing a new wave of storytelling. Currently, we’re supporting over 60 production companies and projects across the UK, Hollywood and Europe. We are doubling this initial slate, and expanding to other language markets. We are training the industry professionals in narrative change, some of whom have now been hired by leading streamers and broadcasters. And we support and collaborate with a growing ecosystem of organisations deploying this strategy across the creative industries globally.

But this work goes deeper than screen credits. The climate crisis is, at its heart, a cultural crisis. Some might even say it’s a spiritual one - because it forces us to confront fundamental questions that lie at the heart of the system challenge we face: What does it mean to be human in this time? What kind of world are we bringing into being?

Climate is of course not the root problem. It’s a symptom of a system that’s failing people as much as it's failing the planet. A system designed to isolate us, reduce us to consumers and monetise our attention, pit ourselves against each other and create a mental health crisis in our children. It’s why people are lonely, disconnected and feel powerless. It’s why misinformation thrives.

And yet, there is a deep yearning for change. In the US, research from the Frameworks Institute shows that across all demographics and political affiliations, people know the system is broken, but also that they’re open to system change, not just incrementalism.

When people are not being served this vision of system change, and the climate community keeps communicating in ways that sound elitist or ‘left affiliated’, we will continue to miss the opportunity to create a uniting vision that provides meaning and purpose across demographic and party lines.

In the meanwhile, people are continuing to be fed toxic narratives that channel fear into division, denial and despair, finding false scapegoats (migrants) for the growing impacts of the climate crisis, rather than creating justice for those that are really responsible (big oil and their enablers) and showing a compelling pathway to a regenerative system.

This is why narrative change is so key:

Ultimately, system change won't just happen by lobbying governments. And it’s not just about getting lots of people to watch better films and TV shows. It’s about mobilising around a shared purpose - one that people connect with not just intellectually, but emotionally. Because what it takes to win on climate is also what it takes to win on mental health, on human, species and economic health. And when we focus on the system causes and solutions - not just carbon emissions - we move people out of paralysis and into possibility. We ignite imagination and agency.

We see studios, writers and commissioners, drop their scepticism about ‘climate stories’ being a worthy, ‘impact’ effort, to see the creative possibilities and the audience engagement potential.

We are excited to see a growing interest from philanthropy who are starting to see that culture is of course upstream of politics. They are starting to see this is not just a different communication strategy, nor is it just the work of communicators. That all of us working on climate have the chance to plant seeds of change in fertile, imaginative narrative soil.

We have been amazed by the fast growing demand for our support from leading writers, creatives and commissioners, who all see the excitement in engaging in what is the greatest story of our time. We have the extraordinary privilege to be working at a time when we can still shape its course.

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A piece by Lucy Stone, Founder & Executive Director of Climate Spring.

¹ Brilliant metaphor from our collaborators, the wonderful Paddy and Ella, who brilliantly break down the difference between narrative and story, and expand upon the intersecting issue symptoms here.