Getting your community thinking and talking about climate change is an important first step to encouraging community-level climate action.

Within any community, people will have varying levels of interest in and knowledge about climate change and so communicating information and ideas around climate action can be a really important role for a community organisation.

The following are all important factors to consider when trying to communicate climate to your community in a relevant and accessible way:

• tone of communications and the language used (eg. not too technical, not too preachy, not too doom and gloom)
• level of information about climate change and the need for climate action (eg. easily understandable, bite sized chunks of info)
• medium of communicating your climate messages (eg. Different methods will reach different people so use a variety of approaches to connect with the whole community)
• Being representative of the different demographics and voices within your community.

The Bristol Community Climate Action project partners have used a variety of communication methods to engage a diverse range of people within their communities with the climate action conversation.

Eastside Community Trust produced a ‘climate special’ of their trusted community magazine, have climate themed shows on local community radio and have worked with local children to create climate-themed podcasts.

Bristol Disability Equalities Forum (BDEF) have been hosting climate ‘tea and chat’ sessions at public venues across the city and produced an engaging film to get the Disabled community thinking and talking about climate change.