Image: Edvard Munch, Toward the Forest II, 1915.

What is a climate cafe?

A ‘climate cafe’ is an opportunity to sit, chat and work through our feelings about climate change. The movement was started in Scotland in 2015, and this simple concept has been recreated by a range of communities across the world.

We may feel emotions like anxiety, frustration and grief about climate change while we lose our faith in governments, private cooporations and institutions’ motivation to act to prevent further catastrophe. In tandem, there are ever-fewer spaces in which communities can come together simply to ‘be’ outside home and work. ‘Third places’, as coined by Ray Oldenburg in 1989, are places outside of work/school and home in which people gather and take part in activity. This might be a nightclub; a religious building; a community garden. Third places are relatively affordable or free and activities there are generally unstructured.

Climate cafes might be considered a third place, or perhaps a third ‘space’, as they are a low/no-cost, relatively low-effort event generally held in a publicly accessible location. These ‘third places’ facilitate individual and community wellbeing and connection.

A climate cafe can be thought of as an abstract third place where communities come together and process ‘unproductive’ emotions about climate change.

Climate cafes are not necessarily activist spaces, although options for action may arise in conversation. Climate cafes are broadly aimed at making communities feel connected and facilitating solidarity. They allow us to break through the unspoken silence that surrounds climate change - we all know it’s happening, but many would prefer not to talk about it. A climate cafe can allow those who want to talk it out to do so, and perhaps encourage others to open up.

How does Carlton Climate Cafe work?

Carlton Climate Cafe is in the process of being collaboratively designed with community members known to the organiser, with the hope that more of the community can get involved.

This means that while the event follows the concept of talking through climate change-related emotions in a community space, specific event structure will be defined by community needs.

Carlton Climate Cafe are seeking diverse suggestions from the broader Inner North community about how an event like this may look; critical perspectives are welcomed and encouraged. You will remain anonymous.

While the organiser is not a professional or academic, Carlton Climate Cafe is informed by evidence-based perspectives learned through the organiser’s degree and research assistance internship. To make scientific literature surrounding climate change anxiety and climate cafes simple and accessible, especially for those who may not have access to paywalled journal articles, Carlton Climate Cafe has summarised a few selected resources to create a cogent rationale behind this event.

You can read through these resources here.

Carlton Climate Cafe would like to acknowledge that this event is being collaboratively designed and held upon the land of the Wurundjeri people, and recognise the many Indigenous knowledges and traditions of collective care that long predate the notion of the climate cafe.

About the organiser

Evidence and research

Get involved

Carlton Climate Cafe