How to build a climate story - A practical guide

Storytelling is the art of telling stories to communicate experiences, ideas, thoughts, and values in an engaging way. Rather than simply presenting knowledge or information, stories include human and relatable elements that resonate with the audience on emotional and personal levels. This fosters empathy, sympathy, and establishes a common ground of understanding.

Climate stories use storytelling to communicate topics related to climate change. For many, climate change feels abstract, distant, and complex, making it difficult to inform, educate, or engage them in a way that truly connects. Storytelling makes it possible to communicate complex scientific data, model results, and knowledge to the intended audience. This approach helps to ‘bridge the gap’ between science and society.

This practical guide supports climate adaptation practitioners to develop their own climate stories with the goal of raising awareness about climate threats and planned solutions, or motivating people to take action. This guide was developed as part of the European research project REACHOUT, in which a method for climate stories was developed, evaluated, and refined. Examples from six European cities in this project are highlighted throughout the guide.