Facilitating a powerful group climate experience

31 October 2024 By Alison Maitland

It’s been an emotional rollercoaster – and I don’t use the phrase lightly. Together with fellow coach Nick Martin, I’ve been facilitating a climate action group experience called The Week with these wonderful participants from across a mix of professions.

We watched three films on consecutive days about the climate, biodiversity, food and pollution crises, hosted by Frederic and Helene Laloux. After each, and then exactly a week later, we held deep conversations about our feelings and the actions these motivate each of us to take to save what we can of our precious planet.

Although it’s the second time I’ve facilitated this experience, I found this one even more powerful, and I’d recommend experiencing it more than once.

Here are some things that have really stuck with me:

The drip feed of negative news is not enough to activate people, unless we’re directly impacted.

We need to be exposed to the big and devastating picture of multiple interlocking crises all at once. The first film, The Descent, does this powerfully. After watching it, our group shared feelings of despair, powerlessness, guilt, anger, incredulity, sadness, fatigue and even physical sickness.

From this, it’s tempting to jump to quick fixes. But actually we need to face, acknowledge and stay with the emotions we have. They are important. They are what connect us most deeply to the polycrisis and drive sustained commitment and action when it’s the easier path is to drop back into life and business as usual.

Terrifying data alone are not enough. We need a narrative that connects us to other people who are doing whatever they can, creatively, and with a fulfilling sense of being part of the solution. The Week does this really well, with its many different stories of concern and action from people of different backgrounds, ages and beliefs.

You’ll notice that everyone in the photo is smiling. That’s where we ended up after the third film, which is called The Adventure. It matters a lot that we take action together. Knowing there’s a community of people who are also concerned and doing whatever they can, at the most impactful level possible, makes the crisis not only feel more real but spurs us on when the bad news seems overwhelming.

At the end of those three rollercoaster days, participants said they felt ‘inspired’, ‘energised’, ‘grateful’, ‘connected’, ‘committed’ and ‘happy’.

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