Climate Calling - new approaches to youth engagement using tech

Creating new conversations with young people and helping them to share their stories over a 1 year not-for-profit campaign.

Client - Wood & Water a not-for-profit consultancy.

Problem

Wood & Water approached us with a problem, how do we create engagement with young people around a difficult topic using cutting-edge technology? 

The overarching brief was to create meaningful conversations about the intersection between climate, health and race with young people. Wood & Water wanted to approach this narrative with a co-creation mindset, enabling young people to contribute to the development of the programme ultimately leading to the best outcome.

Solution

Over the last 9 months, we have been delivering workshops to co-create the final product with the help of University students and professors, youth centres and youth clubs, and experts in the field. Wood & Water have now finalised the shape and direction of the workshops and we are all ready for phase 2 of the project next year.

The initial idea was for us to create a VR world where young people could be immersed in the issues, however through a design-thinking process the brief and scope of the project was substantially developed. Throughout the project we have assisted Wood & Water, an expert on the narrative, in creating multi-media tools to educate and engage young people through workshops and a final exhibition of their work. The workshops now focus on educating young people on the important issues, whilst giving them the digital storytelling skills to deliver their own compelling messages with cutting-edge tech.

We will be hosting an exhibition in Covent Garden to celebrate and showcase the captivating creations of the young people, including their videos, websites, music and digital assets. To accompany the exhibition, we are building a digital and VR version of the exhibition that will host all of their work.

We have also created an online training course that guides users through the narrative, and skills without having to attend the workshops.

The outputs

• Expert AI Assistant called Black Ink, trained on approved papers, research and other resources

• A real-world exhibition 

• Virtual reality exhibition

• Brand identity

• Digital asset design and print

• Workshop activities including data exploration, generative AI training and skills, video editing and portals

• An online interactive training course

Comments

Climate Calling is a project that was out of the ordinary for us, being aimed at young people and with a more nuanced an open message compared with other campaigns we work on. Therefore it required out-of-the-box thinking where we utilised our tech expertise to create an engaging and successful campaign.

WAM are experts at facilitating engagement around campaigns, whether it be climate change or employee engagement, we find the most suitable cutting-edge tools for human-centred problems.