Climate reassemblies: innovating community engagement with climate policy through creative participatory methods

Climate ReAssemblies (2024–) is a multi-phase, interdisciplinary research project grounded in participatory and collaborative approaches, that is exploring how democratic innovations such as citizens’ assemblies (democratic mini-publics) can better support inclusive citizen engagement in climate policy. Through arts-based, participatory methods – including scenario-making – it has been working to reassemble the imaginaries and methodologies of climate assemblies in order to address increasingly urgent demands at local, national, and international levels for more inclusive, deliberative and active modes of citizenship in relation to climate change and just transitions.

The project’s Phase 1 explored the creative possibilities for follow-up citizen engagement after a regional citizens’ assembly on climate in the UK. Through a series of PAR-informed workshops, local citizens collaboratively created scenarios for shared climate futures. These scenarios informed the subsequent Phase 2 comprising a series of roundtables with policymakers. Through this work we have acknowledged diverse knowledges, insights and modes of deliberation and explored the potential of participatory arts-based approaches for innovating within democratic processes and catalyzing transformative climate action.

This research article will share the arts-based, participatory methods that underpin the Climate ReAssemblies project, as well as the outcomes they have informed. It will also reflect on how these collaborative or intra-active methods were not only used to further the research process, but also to elicit and democratize knowledge from the citizens in the creation of a collaborative infrastructure, thus responding to this Special Issue’s call. This gathering of practices, techniques, and strategies will be of use to other practitioners engaging with the public on climate change issues, particularly those asking ‘what’s next?’ for citizen-climate policy engagement from local to global levels, and thus for our shared climate futures.