Start from where you are - the air you are breathing. We are both authors and characters in this vast, complex narrative of a heating planet. From how you traveled to the place you are now, the food you ate, the clothes you wear – each choice ripples through our interconnected world, leaving its mark on our changing climate. Climate change is everything change, and as we trace our lives into the fabric of nature, we weave our climate stories.
Filmmakers and storytellers are at the heart of transformative climate action. As filmmakers, we have a unique opportunity to shape what people see and, consequently, how they understand and engage with the climate crisis. The climate crisis is not a single story rendered in degree celsius and targets for action. The stories we tell and how we tell them shape our imagination of the climate crisis. Stories also affect the alliances we create and the actions they lead to. While climate communication shares the latest information about climate change (e.g peer-reviewed studies), climate storytelling is a space for making sense of what this crisis means at a practical, political, emotional and existential level. The stories we tell can be prisms, they can lift us, heal us, open doors, shape imaginaries, activate hope and agency. Through the power of visual narratives, we can make the abstract concrete, the distant personal, and the overwhelming actionable.
In June 2022, Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford published a report showing that more people say they pay attention to documentaries (39%) than to major news organizations (33%) for information about climate change. Documentaries were twice as influential as celebrities and activists on social media and three times more influential than politicians and political parties on this issue. This was the case across all markets in the aggregate, as well as across age groups.
Films (and artistic works more generally) create rich contexts in which information can be communicated. They can also reach audiences that normally would not come across such information. To make a film is to render the climate crisis in a specific way. The climate storytelling community is creating climate stories that are diverse, inclusive, and grounded in the principles of climate justice. They amplify the voices of those on the frontlines of the crisis and by centering their experiences and perspectives, they can foster empathy, build solidarity, and mobilize support for equitable solutions.
The Climate Story Lab was initiated by Doc Society and Exposure Labs in 2019 and since then it has been conducted in over a dozen countries. It brings together storytellers, media makers, scientists, grassroots organisers, funders and changemakers to catalyze the most compelling media projects being made to address the climate crisis and to share knowledge and experience on how to create an impact with climate stories and climate communication in general. The Climate Story Lab wants to inspire and prepare storytellers and cultural organisers — to facilitate necessary climate narrative conversations within their own communities that will inspire citizens, engage politicians, create debate and dialogue and mobilise communities. Through a multi-day convening, the Lab provides a space for collaboration, learning, and creativity to help strengthen the quality and impact of climate storytelling. Participants engage in sessions led by experts on various aspects of climate change and communication strategies, while the filmmakers who participate with a selected project also have the opportunity to workshop their own projects and get feedback from the group. The ultimate goal is to support and amplify narratives that can shift public perception, inspire action, and build the movement needed to tackle the existential threat of climate change.
The Climate Story Lab Nordic (CSLN) 2023/2024 brought together a curated selection of powerful creative narratives addressing climate change and climate justice from across the Nordic region. The goal of the lab was to support climate storytellers and strengthen the Nordic network on climate impact producing to create debate, dialogue within the polarized climate debate and reach more diverse audiences as well as policymakers and other game changers in tackling our global climate emergency. The residential lab took place at Filmhuset in Stockholm in November 2023, fostering an immersive and collaborative environment where filmmaker teams worked on the development of their impact strategies and learned about each other’s practice and approach. CSLN culminated at CPH:DOX24, with a public open event where more than 500 participants; climate scientists, scholars, practitioners, filmmakers and film industry representatives discussed climate storytelling and what can the film industry do to address the climate crisis. At CPH:DOX24 the selected CSLN projects were showcased and connected to key allies, strategists, representatives, organizational partners, and funders to explore and develop impact strategies.
In this collection of essays you will find insights, reflections, and provocations from some of the filmmakers, scientists, practitioners who participated in the CSLN 2023/2024, as well as additional contributions useful to the field. This collection demonstrate how creators are meeting this moment with creativity, courage, and conviction.
This collection is designed for flexible reading. Each essay is self-contained and they are organized in three distinct sections. In the first section, you'll encounter foundational arguments that approach climate storytelling from various critical angles, including climate science, communications, activism, and social justice. The second section provides a snapshot of climate storytelling in the Nordic countries, viewed through the lenses of the talented Nordic filmmakers selected for the 2023/2024 CSL cohort. Their diverse experiences and innovative approaches serve as a microcosm of the larger climate storytelling landscape, illuminating both the challenges faced and the exciting opportunities that lie ahead. In the final section, we turn our gaze to the future, asking "What next?" Building upon the knowledge and insights gained from the previous sections, we explore practical strategies and cutting-edge ideas for pushing the boundaries of climate storytelling, both as individual storytellers and as an industry. This concluding section serves as a powerful call to action, urging filmmakers and the broader film industry to harness the transformative power of their craft to drive meaningful change in the face of the escalating climate crisis.
The Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie in her recent book Cairn, stated "how do we find images and symbols adequate to our predicament?". This is the task that many filmmakers around the world have given themselves to.