On 15th May we screened the National Emergency Briefing documentary to a multistakeholder group in our home town of Midhurst. It was our first ever event in our home town and that felt really important for us as an organisation.

The film brought together all the potential critical impacts that accelerating climate change may bring. Here are some of the reflections of the community that gathered.

Hosted by Really Regenerative CIC, we also invited Sion McGeever, CEO of the South Downs National Park Authority and Aimee Felus, CEO of Western Sussex Rivers Trust to join us and share some of the important work they are doing. After the screening, Really Regenerative hosted a dialogue about what the contents of the film mean to Midhurst.

What struck you the most from the film?

Some important themes emerged.

1. Size, Scale & Working With Complexity

Firstly about the size, scale, and sheer complexity of the challenge we face; and critically the inter-connecting nature of the different aspects of what we call – not just the climate crisis – but the polycrisis. The film does bring home the deep need for international and national leadership that genuinely understand how to work with complex change, but also that we need to step up at local levels too, to work out where we should be putting our community efforts.

2. How we Design & Communicate Change matters

Secondly there’s also a recognition that how we go about creating the change we need, matters. The recognition of the urgency, and that there is understanding and belief that we want to change, is balanced by the nuance and sensibility around how we communicate, how we include and engage different groups and varying opinions and views, and in particular, how we find ways to overcome the systemic hand-breaks that hold us back from activating the future potential we know is present.

Statistics & Statements that Stood Out for you.

There’s also a wide response to the real statistics and clear statements contained in the film. Standout moments for you included:

The CO2 graph
The increase in the predicted rise in temperature
There is no economy in a 3-4C increase in global temperature
We are living in the best climate we will ever live through.

In regenerative design, we often use a framework called ‘the law of three’, where in every situation we can see ‘activating’ forces, ‘restraining’ forces, and to move forwards, we have to find ‘reconciling’ forces. So we’ve tried a wordcloud using that framework.

What responses would you like to see?

This question was more of a challenge to summarise. Responses ranged from the strategic to the hyper-local, from policy to practices and communication to collaboration.

The kind of responses people were looking for across local action were both about building more awareness, better collaboration and specific actions.