The communication of climate change has traditionally followed a deficit model (Bickerstaff, 2004), in which a one-way, top–down communication process is adopted. In this approach scientists have been tasked as the “experts”, whose role is to educate a “non-expert” general public, by increasing their knowledge about a particular topic that the experts deemed to be the most significant (Miller, 2001). However, this one-way approach to the communication of climate change is unlikely to bring about the changes that are needed for adaptation and mitigation, as it fails to consider a series of factors that are key determinants of the way people perceive and react to information (Swim et al., 2009). There is not a one-size-fits-all approach that is able to engage society as a whole with regards to climate change. In addition to the type of information individuals need, the way this information is presented will also have an impact on how it is perceived and taken on board. The source of the information is another factor that influences how it is perceived and assessed, and lack of trust in a source, such as the government, the media, or scientists, has proven to affect responsiveness to the message (Goodwin and Dahlstrom, 2014). Information provided by a source that is perceived as untrustworthy and through one-way communication is unlikely to be effective. For example, a lack of trust in the government can affect how people perceive policies in relation to climate change (Lorenzoni et al., 2007).

In contrast to the deficit model, a dialogue model of two-way communication highlights the need to explore the identities and social norms of different groups in society, as well as the importance of acknowledging the existence of many publics – in contrast to what the deficit model referred to as a single public (Priest, 2016). Furthermore, it also acknowledges that the “non-experts” that constitute the publics also have their own skills and expertise that might also be utilized in the development of research governance (Burns and Gentry, 1998), particularly in the case of these people's own lives and needs, for which they could and should be considered the experts.

The Climate Communication Project aims to understand and evaluate existing expertise in the UK on communicating and engaging the public with climate change. A substantial focus of this project is an expert elicitation (see e.g. de Franca Doria et al., 2009) of the climate communication community, to better understand how a range of specialists carry out their work, to share and promote best practice in the UK, and to point to areas where more investment and attention is needed. This project aims to support and enable a wider structural adjustment to how climate change is discussed and communicated. However, as argued by Lorenzoni et al. (2007) alongside this approach there also needs to be a targeted and tailored information provision to, and communication with, individual citizens and communities. Furthermore, it is essential that the voices of these communities are solicited and considered in the construction of this wider structural adjustment. The work that is presented here reports on a series of dialogues that were established with a small selection of communities across the UK, in order to better demonstrate the importance of these individual voices in developing effective climate change communication strategies.

For this study, a series of three workshops (located in Bristol, Stockport, and Manchester) were coordinated with three distinct and diverse audience groups. Rather than hosting a series of events and expecting members of the community to “come to us”, researchers travelled to established community groups to discuss their needs and potential barriers to considering scientific topics relating to climate change. Three distinct community groups were chosen: the Avonmouth Community Centre in Bristol, Disability Stockport, and a collection of faith groups in Manchester. It is the central thesis of this work that all communities and citizens offer potentially different voices, and as such we did not aim to be representative of “every” community in the UK. Rather we decided to pick a small number of communities in order to demonstrate the value of this approach, and to provide further evidence for its role in developing a more effective communications strategy around climate change.

These three communities were chosen because of their varied composition, and because previous research has highlighted some of the challenges and opportunities of communicating climate change with similar groups. The Avonmouth and Lawrence Western Ward, in which the Avonmouth Community Centre is located, contains areas that are considered to be amongst the most deprived 10 % in England (Bristol City Council, 2015). Previous research has shown environmental concerns increase with social class (see e.g. Norton and Leaman, 2004), although actual environmental footprint tends to increase with wealth (Büchs and Schnepf, 2013). Furthermore, since the early days of the environmental movement in the 1960s, community centres have been seen as a potential focus for effective communication strategies (Burgess et al., 1998). By working with the Avonmouth Community Centre we hoped to better understand the role that community centres could play in engaging with people from different social classes.

As noted by Heltberg et al. (2009) the impacts of climate change, even in developed countries such as the UK will sometimes fall disproportionately on vulnerable individuals, with the disabled forming part of the population most at risk from the effects of climate change (Maibach et al., 2010). By working with Disability Stockport, we wanted to ensure that we were giving a voice to the potentially vulnerable, and to better understand their perceptions of how climate change would affect them both as individuals and as a community.

Finally, faith communities tend to share an emphasis on long-term stewardship and can help disseminate information to their publics (Frumkin et al., 2008). By bringing together a group of faith leaders from across Manchester we wanted to get a range of different faith perspectives in relation to climate change, and to better understand how this information was communicated to their respective communities.

As well as the specific opportunities for dialogue in working with each of these communities, it was the aim of this study to demonstrate that these workshops are an effective way of creating a safe space for discussion around climate change. Furthermore, we wanted to show how such an approach could be utilized by other researchers and how this is a necessary accompaniment to any large-scale plans for communicating climate change at a national level or beyond.

As stated in Sect. 1, the planned workshops were to take place in the spaces of the selected communities rather than expecting participants to travel to a university or neutral location. The reason for this was so that we could better create a safe space in which participants felt comfortable in discussing how climate change affected their communities, as well as individuals' more general concerns about climate change. In planning these workshops, a two-way dialogue was established between the workshop facilitator (SI) and the community leaders and gatekeepers. Through these dialogues, suitable dates and times for the workshops were decided, with each scheduled to last between 2 and 3 h, and at times that were seen as compatible with the lifestyles of the community members. Based on previous experiences and the nature of the activities that were planned for these workshops (see below), between 5 and 10 participants for each of the workshops were seen as optimal, thereby ensuring that all opinions could be voiced and discussed in the time allowed. This number of participants also helped to increase the relative homogeneity within each group in order to capitalize on people's shared experiences (Kitzinger, 1995) relative to the community that they were representing.

Following the work of Illingworth and Jack (2018), it was decided that as well as having a facilitator (SI) and a number of community members, these workshops should also involve the participation of one climate communications expert. The reasons for this were 2-fold. Firstly, it meant that if any technical questions relating to climate change arose, then these experts would be on hand to provide that information, or else recommend a suitable source for further inquiry. Secondly, by involving climate change experts in the workshop, we hoped to demonstrate to them first-hand the diverse nature of the publics that they were communicating with. The recruitment of the participants for these workshops was done through the organizations that we were working with as part of this study, i.e. the Avonmouth Community Centre, Disability Stockport, and Manchester Cathedral. Participants were recruited directly through the community groups and their gatekeepers, with a very basic flyer provided to each of the organizations so that they could advertise the planned date and time of the event. Prior to the workshops there were no incentives, financial or otherwise, offered to the participants to encourage attendance, other than some basic refreshments.

These workshops all adopted a similar format, beginning with a pre-workshop questionnaire (see the Appendix) to be filled out individually by the participants (it should be noted that this pre-workshop questionnaire actually took place at the beginning of the workshop, prior to the initial conversations, and so would probably have been better named “pre-discussion questionnaire”). This questionnaire involved asking the participants to first consider the major issues that affected their community (not necessarily related to climate change), and then to think about how climate change affected them at an individual and community level (if it did at all) and the way(s) in which climate change was currently communicated; it was filled in after the initial scope of the research had been explained by SI and the consent forms had been signed. These responses were to form the basis of the initial discussions amongst the participants, with their responses acting as an aide memoire to both help direct the dialogue during the workshops and also to serve as a record for data collection. Following this discussion, the participants were guided through a series of poetry-writing exercises, which involved them first working as individuals and then collectively to write poetry about two different topics: their community, and climate change. Poetry was used in this way as it has been shown to be an effective tool in developing dialogue amongst underserved audiences (Illingworth and Jack, 2018) whilst offering an alternative form of data collection to complement that recorded in the pre-workshop questionnaire. These poems were then further discussed amongst the participants, following which a post-workshop questionnaire was individually completed. This post-workshop questionnaire was designed to assess the opinions of the participants in relation to the workshop and to determine whether they had any further questions or required any additional information about anything that had been discussed. Throughout the workshops, SI made detailed field notes to later help in the analysis of the responses; this largely took the form of recording and observing the general nature of the discussions that followed the pre-workshop questionnaire and the creation of the poetry.

Poetry can be used to help reframe and develop dialogue amongst participants and has an established history as a tool that can be used by researchers to both communicate with and elicit engagement amongst different audiences. For example, by turning participant recordings and transcripts into poetic performances, Finley (2003) demonstrated how poetic responses might be used to open up new dialogues with communities, using their own words but presented in an alternative format. Similarly, poetry that is written by participants can be used as data by researchers to better understand the lifeworlds of the authors, serving as powerful narrative examples in the development of education and advocacy goals (Poindexter, 2002). By asking the participants to write their own poetry, we hoped to enable them to consider their thoughts and opinions in a creative space, which could then be analysed alongside their non-poetic responses. The reasons that poetry was used rather than another artistic medium (e.g. sculpture or drawing) were 2-fold. Firstly, the workshop facilitator (SI) has experience in both creating poetry and running poetry-writing workshops: as such he was able to play the role of what Vygotsky (1980) termed the “More Knowledgeable Other”, and in doing so could help to extend the social learning of the participants. Secondly, poetry writing is a very accessible activity that only requires paper and pens/pencils, and which can be both easily transported and also supported, for example, with regards to participants who are themselves unable to write. It should also be noted that reading and analysing (as well as writing) poetry can also be used to engage different audiences with specific topics, and that there is a history of such initiatives being used to successfully explore different relationships and opinions across and between communities (see e.g. Furman et al., 2004). However, for the purposes of this research, we chose to focus on writing poetry as it allowed for the most collaborative experience within the framework of the workshops.

The poetry-writing exercises involved four basic steps.

Participants were asked to write a “list poem” about the chosen topic (either “your community” or “climate change”). In this exercise, the participants were given 90 s to list everything that they associated with the chosen topic and were reminded that this need not only be things that they could see, but rather that the list could comprise any associated sense, emotion, or experience.

Participants were asked to write one sentence about the chosen topic (either “How you feel about your community” or “How you feel about climate change”, using the list poem as a word bank for inspiration if required.

Participants were then asked to work in pairs and to combine their two sentences. The collaborative effort did not have to rhyme, but it did have to reflect both individuals' observations, and could either be a combination of the two sentences or else something new entirely.

Pairs of participants were then asked to work with another pair, and to combine all thoughts and sentences into a coherent piece. Again, this did not have to rhyme, but all participants had to be happy that their thoughts and opinions were reflected in the finished piece.

The poetry-writing exercises took place after the initial discussion, as it was hypothesized that this initial dialogue would help the community members to explore their opinions in relation to climate change, both as individuals and as a collective. Furthermore, it was theorized that the poetry would be congruent with these discussions, presenting them in an alternative format that could be shared and analysed alongside the responses to the pre-workshop questionnaire.

All of the questions and prompts that were used throughout the workshops can be found in the Appendix and were also sent to the gatekeepers in advance of the workshops so that their suitability for the participants could be assessed and any necessary provisions to ensure inclusivity could be made. During this study anonymity was preserved by not recording any identifiable information, and during the analysis, any specific or personal narratives that could be seen as identifiable was redacted and destroyed without recording. Furthermore, all the participants were given sufficient time to read the consent forms, so as to avoid assumed consent, and any support workers had access to the consent forms prior to the workshop, so that they could help advise and inform. A suitable line of support was also established through which any distress could be reported and suitably dealt with. By working alongside the support workers all participants knew exactly what the study was for, what it entailed, and what their involvement was. All the support workers were made fully aware of the study, and it was made clear to all participants that they could take part in the activities without having their responses recorded or subsequently analysed. This research project received full ethics approval via Manchester Metropolitan University's Academic Ethics Committee.

The findings from the three different workshops are presented as three individual case studies, followed by a discussion in Sect. 4 about general findings and recommendations in terms of what this approach has taught us. As noted by Moser (2010), more case-specific research is required in relation to communicating climate change, mainly because there is no “one-size-fits-all solution”, with different audiences requiring different narratives, frames, media, and communicators. By presenting the findings of these workshops as case studies we hope to better address this requirement and to also provide further evidence for the need for this type of qualitative research in order to develop effective climate change communications strategies.

Each of these case studies will begin with a general overview of the logistics of the workshop, followed by a presentation of the discussion that occurred following the pre-workshop questionnaire. The poems that were written by the community groups will then be presented and contextualized in relation to this discussion, followed by a summary of the key findings for each community group. With regards to the poems that appear throughout this study, other than correcting for spelling they are presented exactly as they were written by the participants during the workshops.

In reading these case studies, and by analysing the discussions and the poetry that were generated in the workshops, it is evident that each of the three communities has a clear and distinctive voice. These distinct voices mean that there are distinct challenges in effectively developing dialogue around climate change, but as can be seen from Sect. 3, there are also diverse opportunities in working with each of these communities to better develop this dialogue.

In all three of the communities there was a sense of collective guilt, centred on a recognition of personal responsibility: that we as individuals were at least partly to blame for the negative effects of climate change that were observed at both an individual and community level. However, how each of those communities reacted to notions of personal and community responsibility was distinct and serves to highlight why a “one-size-fits-all” approach to communicating climate change, or even developing dialogue around the subject, would not work. The participants in the Avonmouth workshop initially largely felt overwhelmed and de-motivated by their guilt. So much had already gone wrong that how could they as individuals now help to set things right; it seemed like potentially an overwhelming task, and they felt “Confused, conflicted, guilty, sad, helpless”. But through discussions amongst themselves and a sharing of that guilt they came to the realization that they “have a/responsibility to educate myself, live simply and do whatever/I can to affect positive change”. In order for a community like the Avonmouth Community Centre to enact positive change, they need to be freed from any individual guilt, which itself has maybe been deepened by previous (one-way) climate change communication efforts.

In contrast to the Avonmouth group, whilst the Stockport group also acknowledged their guilt, they recognized that they were not solely responsible for the current negative effects of climate change. Furthermore, they recognized that through their actions they could make a positive difference: “I feel like if I give as hard as I could/My friends will live in a world that's good.” Contrast this to the “we can educate people/to the real statistics of what is happening in our world” of the Avonmouth poem. There is a greater degree of certainty (still not absolute) that they can enact positive change, both as individuals and as a collective. In working with a community like Disability Stockport, effective communications would likely highlight ways in which others (e.g. governments and policymakers) could be held to account for their collective failings.

The community of faith leaders had a similar outlook to the Stockport group, recognizing that “We must reduce the harm we cause/Both personal and corporate ware/A better carbon footprint/Before our world we tear.”, and that “To make the world more fair./We need to change behaviour”. As with the Avonmouth group, they also realized the need for education, and given their own positions within their communities they recognized that any initial activity likely needed to be driven by them. This was arguably a different type of individual responsibility than was evidenced in the other two workshops, as the faith leaders recognized that in some instances without their guidance and support for a particular topic action might not be instigated or even possible. In working with this community, it could be argued that effective climate change communications would provide reliable resources and frameworks for engagement that could then be shared by the individuals amongst their own communities and organizations. As was indicated by the participants themselves during this discussion, their sense of community is intertwined with their own religious world views, and as such several of these attitudes (e.g. “overcoming prejudices” and “addressing consumption”) might be driven by religious practices rather than environmental concerns. It would also be interesting to further investigate what would happen if recommendations for successful climate change mitigation strategies at the local community level clashed with the religious ideologies or discourses of a particular group. As Maxwell (2003, p. 257) observed, “reductionist perceptions of reality are proving inadequate for addressing the complex, interconnected problems of the current age”, and in addition to the benefits of working with such groups in tackling climate change, it would be worthwhile for future workshops to investigate the extent to which religious world views potentially clashed with climate change communications, and how different faith leaders reacted as a result.

The manner in which guilt about climate change was attributed, and the extent to which it oppressed individual and collective action, form just one example of the different ways in which these communities responded to climate change and how it is communicated. People's individual roles within these communities also need to be considered. For example, are they resident or employee, volunteer or patron, faith leader or community member? These roles may change depending on circumstance, and many of us belong to several communities, in which we might have different roles and react accordingly. Given these different communities and the roles within them, how do we go about categorizing them in terms of developing effective climate communications? Helm et al. (2018) have suggested using an approach that splits people's values into egotistic, altruistic, and biospheric, but is even this approach too broad? As noted by one of the participants in the Manchester workshop,

Different people respond to different stimuli. Express themselves very differently, so how to engage will vary according to the audience/psychological makeup of hopes and fears.

The approach that was adopted in this study has helped to give voice to a small selection of different communities, and in doing so has helped us to better understand why there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to communicating climate change. It also highlighted why two-way dialogues are needed to help capture and understand these approaches, as opposed to one-way communications which can instead instil negative feelings and attitudes. By creating a safe space in which dialogue could take place, these workshops helped to empower the community members, and in using poetry as part of the process the participants were presented with a creative approach to solidify their thoughts and communicate and discuss them with others. The poetry also acted as a powerful tool in helping participants to explore the lifeworlds of their associates and enabled them to reflect on what had been discussed and what they might decide to do in the future. Whilst poetry can at times be perceived as elitist and “difficult”, these workshops demonstrated that given the correct environment and facilitation, writing poetry can instead be accessible and empowering. None of the workshop participants had any issues in composing their poems, and indeed almost all of them took great joy in creating and sharing them.

The creative nature of these workshops was enjoyed by all of the participants and demonstrates how poetry can play a powerful role in helping to develop effective dialogue around climate change. During the workshops, several of the participants noted that this kind of activity should be run elsewhere and that it was needed to help ensure that all voices could be heard. Based on these experiences the following recommendations are offered to people wanting to adopt a similar approach.

These workshops need to happen in the communities themselves. It is not desirable (in terms of both logistics and the creation of a safe space) for these workshops to happen at a university or even a neutral venue.

This study is limited in its findings, in that we only report on the outcomes of three workshops run in three different community groups. The findings would likely be very different were these workshops to be run again but with different communities. However, this further serves to underline the thesis of this study, i.e. that qualitative research at the community level is an essential accompaniment to larger-scale research projects that look at the way in which climate change is communicated. One-off workshops were used in this study, as we believe that it represents a model that could be most easily adopted by other researchers and for other communities. Additionally, this study was not designed to monitor the long-term impacts of these workshops; however, given the responses of the participants (and in particular the comments made by the Avonmouth group – see Sect. 3.1), such a study would likely yield interesting results. In addition to working with different communities and monitoring any long-term impacts, future studies could also adopt a similar approach to running workshops with several communities at a time. Furthermore, future workshops could also involve an element of reading and discussing poetry that had already been written (either by well-known poets, or by other communities in similar workshops) about issues that the community identified as being important, as doing so would allow participants to explore and discuss different perspectives and lifeworlds. As demonstrated in this study, the collaborative poetry writing worked well in allowing participants to explore each other's lived experiences in a creative and non-confrontational manner. Such an approach would also likely be successful in helping to bring together different (and perhaps opposed) communities by enabling them to discuss their lifeworlds in this way, as was exemplified by the workshop involving the Manchester faith leaders (see Sect. 3.3).

This study has presented a framework for engaging communities in an effective dialogue around the effects of climate change. In presenting the results of these discussions via three case studies, we have also highlighted the need for such initiatives, in terms of both better understanding the needs of these communities and also the opportunities that they present in mobilizing effective action against the negative effects of climate change. In addition to the specific needs and opportunities for each of these communities, this study has also demonstrated how poetry can help community members to explore their own and each other's lifeworlds in a creative environment, and in doing so has shown how workshops such as these are an effective way of creating a safe space for discussion around climate change.

This approach has also provided evidence for how a dialogue model can help to break down some of the barriers that are created via one-way communication exercises. By creating a safe space in which dialogue could be established and individual voices could be heard and listened to, the perceptions of “experts” changed from untrustworthy to valued and reliable sources of information. In developing this dialogue, it is vital to also realize the different roles that individuals play within different communities, and when working with carers and other gatekeepers consideration needs to be given to how they too can be supported in developing their own effective dialogues.

The three communities in this study represent only a small fraction of the different audiences and publics that need to be engaged with, in order to effectively develop a dialogue around communicating climate change and bringing about the changes that are needed for mitigation against its negative effects. The small-scale, creative, and personal qualitative research that is presented here is essential to help contextualize and develop larger impersonal quantitative work, demonstrating that whilst we are multitudes we are also individuals, and that all voices should be listened to and taken into account. Such engagement should not simply be done as a box-ticking exercise, but should be encouraged because diversity and inclusion act as a powerful tool for empowering citizens and enacting change (see e.g. Stevens et al., 2008). By telling individuals what they can and cannot do, and how they can and cannot feel in relation to climate change, we are arguably contributing to a feeling of collective guilt that can entrench feelings of defensiveness and despair. By listening and giving voice to each of these communities we can not only help to break down these barriers, but in doing so can also benefit from their unique skill sets and experiences as future allies in our battle against anthropogenic climate change.