Adapted from the Death Café model, a climate café is a simple, hospitable, empathetic space where fears & uncertainties about our climate & ecological crisis can be safely expressed.
Why do we need Climate Cafés?
As it becomes more evident that climate and ecological breakdown are a clear and present danger to our safety and wellbeing, we increasingly need to talk about what our changing world 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 clearly and constructively, and to explore some complex feelings and thoughts which may often be taboo and hard to talk about.
With sturdy enough support structures in place, most people can sustain challenging feelings without either dissociating and numbing or going into blind panic. They can engage with difficult truths whilst staying connected and grounded.
A climate café aims to be such a structure - a container that is strong enough to allow the exploration of fear, anxiety, and other emotions such as anger, helplessness, sadness, grief or depression.
What happens during a Climate Café?
The focus of discussion is participants’ thoughts and feelings about the climate and ecological crisis. There are no guest speakers and no talks, and it is an advice-free zone. Whilst the climate and ecological crisis is usually the main focus of the café we realise that other related preoccupations need a space to be explored. This can happen here too.
Our cafés are open to anyone aged 18 or over who is worried about the climate and ecological crisis.
If you are under 18 and need support please follow this link for resources that we hope may help, including access to our list of practitioners offering three free sessions of therapeutic support to those who feel they would benefit from it. We have also been developing programmes of support for young people which have recently been piloted. You can find out more about those here.
If you are a parent/carer of a child or young person, you may wish to check out our Parent/Carer/Guardian Climate Circles which are currently running twice per month.
Who will be leading the Climate Café?
Two people facilitate each climate café - they come from a pool of more than forty facilitators from within our membership.
Training and ongoing supervision for our facilitators is provided by a small, experienced team headed by Rebecca Nestor and Gillian Broad who lead our organisation’s Climate Café offering.
How do I book a place?
Our climate cafés are held online three times per month. Follow this link to our Eventbrite page to find a date that suits you or check our events calendar which also lists climate cafés held by CPA Scotland and other independent offerings from our trained members, If the date of your choice is fully booked please join the waiting list as places do become available at short notice and we endeavour to hold additional cafés simultaneously when we can. The waiting list also helps us understand the level of demand.
If you have any questions or concerns feel free to get in touch.