Transition Liverpool: Climate Cafés

What is a Climate Café?

Perhaps you have recently begun to worry about what is happening to our climate and what this might mean for you, and for your family and friends? Or maybe you are an activist or professional in the climate world, used to feeling the pain of climate grief or anxiety and keeping it at bay by all the great work you do? A climate café is a simple, hospitable, empathetic space where anyone’s fears and uncertainties about our climate crisis can be safely expressed.  A space in which we would not talk about what we or others are doing or should be doing. We would just talk about climate change and how it is making us think and feel.

Why do we need climate cafés?

We really need the kind of exploration that climate cafés provide as we face the climate crisis. We increasingly need to talk about what our changing climate means for us in terms of impacts at personal, family and societal level. We need to imagine it in some detail so as to be able to think about it constructively and clear-sightedly, and to explore some complex feelings and thoughts which may often be taboo and hard to talk about.

We who are doing whatever we can in our everyday lives to protect our world, as well as climate activists and campaigners, can experience overwhelming and conflicting emotions. We sometimes need to talk about how we feel and what we think, as a way of freeing up our capacity to act.

What happens in a climate café?

The focus of discussion in a climate café is participants’ immediate thoughts and feelings about the climate crisis with facilitators present. It is an advice-free zone, with no pressure to take action, join a group or change your mind on anything. We work to make the space as safe as possible by agreeing to confidentiality and sharing ways in which this can be realistically and helpfully achieved. Our volunteer facilitators are trained and experienced in this work and attendance is free of charge. We plan to be able to offer a series of cafe sessions and hope to help equip further people to facilitate cafes with us.

Meeting

We offer two models of Climate Cafes. We mainly meet in person over shared drinks and food, in a common physical space.

Online cafes are easier to get to and there’s the great advantage that people can join from all over our region and beyond, bringing new people together with new experiences and new synergies.

For more information please contact transitionliverpool@gmsil.com