Tom Deacon is an activist and climate educator who is working alongside In-Situ to co-develop 'Climate Lab Pendle', a space for learning together as community and collectively processing how we feel about what is happening to our planet and to everyday lives.
Inspired by the work of Joanna Macy and Active Hope, here he shares his personal journey from despair into action and connection.
What does it mean to step out intentionally into a landscape of hope in these challenging times? What skills and provisions do we gather to enable our journey? How do we navigate? What company do we seek, and what shelter might we find along the way?
Highland walker, Image: Gauthier Saillard
These are both metaphorical and literal questions I explore in the work I do as a climate educator, trainer, activist and pilgrim. I’d like to invite you on a walk through the landscape of these questions….being curious to the many more questions that appear into view, as well as pausing to ponder some imperfect answers we might explore on route.
First, let me share some of my path leading to where we stand.
Buttercup walkers, Image: Lewis Winks
The path here…
I’m a shaggy haired student in the year 2000, lectures on sea level change and Antarctic sea ice vying for my volleyball obsessed attention ...climate change enters my worldview.
Ten years later, I close a book, falter, feel confused, angry. Six Degrees by Mark Lynus, a painstakingly researched narrative of climate science looking degree by warming degree at what will most likely unfold in our world if we continue on the course we are on. This cannot be….surely we can’t let this happen knowingly. I stop flying, let go of having children, sell my van, fall into despair.
November 2018, and I’m stepping into the road on a central London bridge. I sit down, others sit down around me. We wait, anticipating arrest. More people spill into the road, the traffic fades, skyscrapers glint in the bright sunshine. We talk, start to sing.
Active Hope workshop at The Garage, image: Anna Taylor
Active Hope workshop at The Garage, image: Anna Taylor
Those moments were the shift, from knowing into proportionate action.
Action for me, in these urgent and vivid times, is about balancing hope and despair. The despair of how far we have barrelled into this multifaceted crisis, and enacting hope without optimism. Hope as something we do……together, regardless of the likelihood of the outcome. Hope as a verb.
This understanding of hope is pivotal for me in the work I do now….work that requires a daily look into the well of despair, the stats, the stories of the devastation, the emotional maelstrom that is our internal and collective climate psychology in response. In a society where we are spun a pervasive narrative that happiness comes through consumption, this sort of hope is radical!
Somewhere between closing that book and sitting down on that road I’d encountered the work of two people that would shift my path. Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone. Their book ‘Active Hope’ had filtered into me, influencing my work as an educator, and later shaping my activism and facilitation work.
Recommended reads from a community training session at Althams, Image: Anna Taylor
Active Hope, and it’s root practice The Work That Reconnects, would become a prominent part of my work, facilitating workshops and retreats for educators, activists, NGO’s and young people – all offering spaces to explore our deep appreciation for life, to acknowledge the pain that we feel in response to the multiple crises unfolding around/through/within us, to sense into other perspectives on our empowered part to play, and through these to step toward and into inspired collective action.
Climate Fresk and Talkaoke at Althams, image: Anna Taylor
Stepping into hope, entangling with privilege
These steps into activism, into a landscape of hope in the face of crisis, also brought with it an unfolding inner journey. A journey of many questions that shone a light on my social location. What does it mean to take action, to do hope, from a place of multiple layers of privilege? To explore this internal landscape, that can play out in so many harmful and beautiful ways in our outer worlds, is an ongoing journey with much challenge and reward.
How can we as educators, leaders, artists, community workers….in all our roles….dance this simultaneous dance of inner work and outer action in a way that meets the scale of the urgency while perpetuating as little harm as possible?
Active Hope workshop at The Garage, image: Anna Taylor
How can we accept the inevitable risk of causing some harm without it stifling our motivation and determination for radical change? And how can we support the journey of others who’s well intentioned actions, motivated by anger and fear that blinker them in some way, risk them perpetuating the harm they are setting out to address?
Finding a balance in my climate education work between the messaging of rapid fossil fuel phase-out and addressing inequality feels key to this. It is this inequality, driven by multiple historic and current systems of oppression, that underpins the multiple crises we are living in. It is these threads that weave right into my fabric, that pull on and shape my many layers of privilege, that need addressing in order that I truly unleash the potential for positive change to happen through me.
Climate Fresk and Talkaoke at Althams, image: Anna Taylor
As a cisgendered, educated, white male, brought up in middle class circumstances my layers of privilege are clear, and I also hold in my awareness that there will be so much playing out through me, through my culturing, that I am not yet aware of.
Stepping into the hugely varied spaces that I do in my climate work, spaces that span class, race, gender identity, educational background, physical ability and particularly wealth, this is a constant process of seeking how to show up with authenticity, self-awareness and openness to connection across difference that can often be stirred societally into division. Exploring how to meet people where they are, to find our points of commonality, our shared humanity, to be on a journey together from what might be wildly varied starting points. For me this is ‘my work’, the inner journey that underpins the outer change. It’s a journey through a landscape of simultaneous demolition (a messy process!) and construction (a creative and skilled process). I’m ever in beginners mind with this, learning and re-learning. There is something here, that I’m yet to unpack, about the power of Talkaoke.
Talkaoke and climate conversations at Nelson Festival of Culture, image: Diane Muldowney
The question that arises for me on this path, and sometimes feels overwhelming, is how to find the balance between this inner process and the urgency of the outer work? ‘Imperfectly’ is my working answer.
How does this show up in your work in Pendle? What is your internal and external dance with this? What challenges and joys do you meet in your work coming from this dimension of change?
Navigation in low visibility
As far as my wanderings have taken me on all of this, I am yet to find a map. We are living in uncharted territory, the horizons are hazy! And while I am a great lover of maps, it is a compass that I wouldn’t go without.
So what can act as a compass for us in these times?
There is something here about the guiding power of story. Story, narrative, worldview….these often unrecognised or invisible shaping forces of our world.
How might we understand what is playing out in this moment, and how does that influence how we respond?
Climate Fresk and Talkaoke at Althams, image: Anna Taylor
The Work that Reconnects offers three stories that can be seen as simultaneously playing out…..with an invitation to choose which narrative we get behind (while recognising we will inevitably dance between them).
If the work I did was purely about informing people how urgent the climate crisis is...laying out the facts and stories of devastation and oppression, I would be sharing the story of ‘The Great Unraveling’. The cracking and collapsing of our physical, social, ecological, economic and political systems. This is a very real escalating story that has been playing out for a very long time, and has its place in motivating action. Yet it is one that, if inhabited as the sole story, is likely to lead us to a place of psychological and physical burnout...itself part of the same narrative.
Change work also has a remit to highlight the story which is driving the harm, Business as Usual. This story, perpetuated by big business, big politics, and media corporations entangled with both, is a narrative of how successful we are in this moment, that growth is the one true aim, and that happiness is something we can click and collect. It shrugs off the raging storms, the dying ecosystems and the human tragedies as one-off events that will pass or can be fixed with technological advancement. Exposing this story as a hollow promise deeply entangled with oppression is vital, yet on its own will most likely cultivate action born from outrage, frustration and even hate ... .and therefore with potential to unwittingly play into the harm
Climate Fresk and Talkaoke at Althams, image: Anna Taylor
It's a third story, The Great Turning, that is so often missing from our daily newsfeeds. We’d be forgiven for believing that everything is on an unstoppable downward spiral to oblivion, that it's too late to turn things around so why bother.
But what about the amazing work being done tirelessly in our communities supporting those most vulnerable to the multiple crises we face? What about the courageous acts of people worldwide that are standing up to the perpetrators of injustice in so many arenas? Where are the tales of extraordinary feats of creativity, determination and collective power that are transforming the way we eat, build, live together, travel, do business, generate energy, make decisions and so much more? It is these dimensions of change, the resistance, the re-skilling and vitally the inner work for change, that make up the largely untold but massively underestimated story of life supporting life. A story based in active hope, for us all to be inspired by, guided by, to find our part to play in this unmapped moment of turmoil and change.
Climate Fresk and Talkaoke at The Garage, image: Anna Taylor
As we look for company in this story, which other people, groups, organisations do we trust to be part of that compass? What values, signs of integrity, signals of an aligned ethos do we seek out in others? There is no ‘right’ answer to this, for in my experience it is a rich part of the journey.
Connection feels key, and connection takes time, patience, skill and often determination to cultivate. Connection to ourselves, to others, and to the wider world. The paths to this connection spread far and wide across the landscape, some well trodden, many ours to find through the thick vegetation and knotted contours. But we needn’t feel alone in our seeking, connection at all levels is something we can best cultivate in the company of others.
This is Nelson young people's Climate Fresk at 3B Systems , image: Anna Taylor
For me, this is why the vital ingredient of the work I do is that it happens in groups. Group process, especially when based in non-judgmental listening, can offer powerful spaces for us all to voice our concerns, feel validated in our emotional response to the climate emergency, and to take strength from knowing others feel similarly.
As we keep walking I’d love to hear how you approach connection in your work, and what stories thread through and make meaning of these relationships.
Climate Fresk and Talkaoke at Altham, image: Anna Taylor
Watersheds
So let’s walk on for a while, gazing out at the landscapes of Pendle - from whatever side of the hill that might be, or from its flanks or summit. What if we really saw the contours, the patterns, the shaping forces of this place? Seeing the geology, the story of deep time that underpins it. Seeing the watershed the hill creates, determining the flow of air and water, shaping its watercourses and the lives of those that inhabit its folds and coat-tails.
What are the geological structures of the landscape of this moment in time? How can we expose them to view through our work, to sense that we are shaped by and have agency to shape the landscape of this moment. What watersheds and contour features might give us clues to the shaping forces of our world, to the flows we might support or dismantle, and therefore how we might collectively shape a better world for all entangled in societies folds?
Street based Climate Fresk at Barnoldswick Beach, Pendle, image: Anna Taylor
Street based Climate Fresk at Barnoldswick Beach, Pendle, image: Anna Taylor
A significant focus of the work I do is about cultivating empowered, sustained and inspired collective climate action. To inform people of the magnitude of these crises, of the escalating statistics, of the underpinning drivers, can motivate some people, to some extent. However for many this is simply overwhelming, and the psychological response to try and maintain some feeling of safety is to numb, other, deny, or distract...and there are many readily available ways to do this. So what other ingredients are needed to activate people?
This is Nelson young people's Climate Fresk and Talkaoke at 3B Systems , image: Anna Taylor
This is Nelson young people's Climate Fresk at 3B Systems , image: Anna Taylor
What if?
What if the communities of Pendle were empowered to make the changes necessary to preserve a flourishing future? What if Citizen’s Assemblies informed the path of political decision making? What if they triggered a social justice driven response of housing retrofits, public transport reform, community owned renewable energy development, land use reform and food security?
How might it feel to imagine a future where our action has been part of a change in the tide? Where do the communities of Pendle have space to dream together, to co-create their own compass?
Climate Fresk at The Garage, image: Anna Taylor
On ending a walk
Thanks for your company on this walk through some reflections of a climate educator. Walking with this stuff together feels so vital. Over recent years I’ve been walking on and off with a pilgrim coat, the ‘Coat of Hopes’. I first met it as it walked through Pendle on it’s way to COP26 in Glasgow.
This is a coat that hundreds of people from all over the UK have sewn their hopes and fears around climate change into, hundreds of people have walked with it, worn it, and had meaningful connections and climate conversations around it.
The coat for me is a metaphor for the work in hand, it’s work is it’s journey, and it keeps walking.
Tom Deacon has 20 years experience engaging wide ranging groups on environmental and social issues linked to climate change. He works with multinational corporations, councils, NGO's and community groups, supporting them to build climate understanding, and to find their empowered response through engaging with climate psychology and strategic planning tools. He has a background in sustainability education, leadership coaching and mountaineering.
*for Climate Fresk, visit: www.climatefresk.org