People shape spaces to make their ‘place’ - this is a collective, not a singular process. The Climate Room is a digital space and community learning platform that seeks to bring together the communities of place, interest and practice in a given place, to inform understanding on the context of the place, the system change requirement and the behaviours that will be required to secure public consent and a fair transition. If we are to succeed in this formal leaders and policy makers have to get better at asking the questions rather than assuming we have the answer. There is a need to be honest with each other and ourselves and collectively owning the challenges ahead whilst learning from where things may have gone wrong in the past. That’s why we are also inviting the policy makers, the academics, the ‘experts’ to also join us in the Climate Room so that this can be a two way process with everyone learning together from each other.
The Fair Future Festival will give space, both physically and digitally, for shared learning across communities. It is an opportunity for all of us to use our senses and immerse ourselves in a given neighbourhood helping us make sense of the conflicts and contractions between the formal knowledge, data, and perceptions we hold alongside the reality and lived experience on the ground.
We will be holding a number of policy playgrounds, hackathons, and sandpits (we’ll explain more about what these are nearer the time) to help the policy maker, regulator, system enabler , innovator those with formal power to action and assign responsibility for taking us on those first few critical steps on the pathway to a fair transition. This early thinking can then be shared within the Climate Room so that together we can look at the options before us and talk through the best course of action.
Community fronted climate change starts now.
Our Collective Memory – Go on be the Brummie with a story to tell!
The Climate Strikes and Fridays for the Future have given young people a voice and a platform in Birmingham, the UK and across the globe. It ensured that young people, and their demands for us to act now to give them a future, have been heard, prompting many of us to think afresh about climate change. But the fair transition to net zero is not just for the young or about a distant future – it’s about the here and now, how we can make homes and neighbourhoods meet our needs today and in the future. Critically we need to learn from what’s gone in the past to help us navigate this very uncertain future. That is why working with schools, community centres and groups we will be getting out and about to hear the stories of the ‘revolutionaries’ who went before us, the older generation of Brummies’; the proud pioneers who moved to new neighbourhoods from across the city and the globe to support the growth in manufacturing but who too often now live in places that the current system is failing.
We want to hear from the trade unionists like those who rallied at Saltley Gate, care workers, the family businesses, and industrial pioneers like Webster and Horsfall who were around here in the 18th century when Birmingham rose from being a simple market town into one of the greatest industrial cities in the world and now are part of shaping our new future. We want to hear from the families that made their homes for example on Castle Vale and remain tenants there today, those who exercised the right to buy, and what it meant to you then and now, all of you whose creativity, faith and culture are at the core of what makes Birmingham the place it is. We have so much to learn from what has gone on in the way we organise, innovate, and help each other get through the changes ahead. Story corners and story collection points will be put on throughout festival events – if you or your organisation has a story to tell or wants to help us in the collection, please volunteer.
Festival for a Fair Future
The last two years have been so tough, too many lives have been lost, our jobs, homes and well-being have all being all at risk. But if the last two years has shown us anything it is that the power and potential of Birmingham is truly on our streets. We have seen friends, family, neighbours, faith groups and community organisations pull together. Brum Together is a great example bringing a host of organisations together to deliver food to those in need. We think it’s time to celebrate our strengths as Brummies’ recognising what we hold in common and celebrate the too often untold wealth of knowledge and potential to make change that is found in our neighbourhoods. So, over the next few months we’ll be holding a series of face to face events in our schools, neighbourhoods and wider community finding ways to come together, maybe over a meal, story or particular activity to shape and share our understanding of how we can collectively craft and deliver a fair transition to net zero in Birmingham.
There are a whole range of fun and engaging coming your way and are really excited to share the program line up soon which you will be able to find right here.
