Playful Activism: Engaging Climate Conversations

How do you use playfulness and LEGO® to make an impact on something as serious as climate change? 

Lucy Hawthorne is the founder of Climate Play. She is a facilitator, LEGO® Serious Play® practitioner and campaigner at heart. She was an environmental campaigner and a social issues campaigner for about 15 years, helping ban fracking in the UK before starting Climate Play.

Despite this success she was able to reflect that ultimately they weren't deeply changing people's minds and hearts on the issues. 

Through Climate Play they create conversations, events and actions that people actually want to be involved in rather than only feeling like they should.

Things to consider

• Play isn’t being super extroverted - it’s having a sense of humour.
• Playfulness and perfectionism are complete opposites.
• “Outcomes are not meant to be playful, but our process is.” - Yana Buhrer Tavanier
• Make play accessible
• Practicing playfulness is an ongoing journey
• The need to be light footed, create space for experimentation, and try different ways of doing things
• Playfulness is about giving people choice and agency

Links

• Lucy Hawthorne LinkedIn
• Climate Play
• Yana Buhrer Tavanier - How to recover from activism burnout
• Carol Dweck - Growth Mindset
• Catherine Wilkes’ Shoopery