What on Earth is a Climate Café?

At the end of a hot, dry summer where the impact of climate change has been visible from day to day, how do Oxford residents and their families come to terms with the changing world? Karen Dauncey, a volunteer for Oxford's Network of Climate Cafés, writes about their work.

How do we cope with anger, grief or shame and the other difficult emotions thrown up by climate change?

Most people are concerned about the climate crisis and ecological emergency, and many are anxious and often scared about what the future holds. A young person, angry and frustrated at the lack of progress to protect their future, may find it hard to talk to older people who may feel blamed and attacked. Grandparents may feel shame and grief at their generation’s responsibility for major damage to our world which should be their grandchildren’s future.

Getting involved in groups who alert the world to climate change, or simply getting on with building resilient communities, can offer solace and some practical impact. But not everybody wants to or has the space in their lives to take action. Climate cafés offer something different – a place to focus on feelings, which is known to strengthen our capacity to face what is happening.

For the past six years a small group of trained facilitators has been quietly expanding an initiative they call “Climate Cafés”: small, regular, open and welcoming meetings, in and around Oxford. 

The cafés were started face to face and moved online during the pandemic. Now, in-person meetings are once again happening at several venues in Oxford. 

The cafés were initially set up by Rebecca Nestor, a member of the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA). Now a core group of facilitators, trained by the CPA, run the climate cafés and are available to support anyone wanting to set up climate cafés across the county outside the city. 

Cafés currently take place every month at the Common Ground café and the North Wall arts centre in South Parade, and potential new cafés have been supported in Rose Hill and in towns around Oxfordshire. 

The cafés are supported and promoted by Low Carbon Oxford North (LCON) and Rose Hill and Iffley Low Carbon (RHILC) but the group has also worked with the Oxford University students' Climate Society, the Old Fire Station, the annual Marmalade Festival, and Henley Big Green Week. They have provided workshops, one-off cafés and training. 

Typically a café welcomes 6-12 people, and cake is always integral! Attendees are supported to introduce themselves by using a range of attractive natural objects on the table to help them link to both their feelings and the natural world. Care is taken to support a degree of confidentiality (although meetings are in publicly accessible places) and it’s emphasised that these are not therapy sessions but a mutual space to be heard and to listen. The facilitators use their training to help everyone have space and time to engage and to develop a sense of safety. Mutual respect for each other’s feelings is a key feature of being together in these spaces.

The sessions are structured with a discussion round at the beginning. This helps to introduce people to each other and explain a little of their motivations in coming. Then a facilitated but more free flowing discussion picks up on, and explores, the feelings that have been expressed. Cafés are all very different, with themes coming from the unexpected synergy between very different participants. 

The cafés often bring to the surface links between the climate crisis and issues in people’s lives and in the media. Difficult feelings about climate are often at an interface with other worrying things like the cost of living crisis, wars, refugee welfare, and health crises. 

But the facilitators always try to bring this back to participants’ emotional responses and how others in the group are experiencing them. The goal is to accept the validity of all our feelings and to have the positive experience of being heard.

Acceptance of all emotions and not an immediate reaction to try to “put things right” is key. These feelings are not pathological, they are a normal response to what is happening to us and our world. 

The other core factor is to differentiate these discussions from taking action. Some attendees are engaged in environmental action, whether it be with community green initiatives, or local or national campaigning groups. But other participants are not involved in such groups and may feel they are best described as worried but ‘climate curious’.  The focus is on feelings and the cafés try to avoid technical discussions or a push towards climate activism. Calls to action are for other settings and the intention is to avoid what can become competitive and less supportive conversations.  

Attendees sometimes reflect that their family, friends, or workmates may not want to hear about climate anxieties, or they offer advice ‘trying to make things better’, or dismiss their feelings as exaggerated. The café may be the first time their feelings are heard, accepted as real and understandable. Feedback about participants’ experience of climate cafés is warmly welcomed and taken seriously.

Climate cafés have been the subject of research in the last three years. One small study found:

“the unique space of the Climate Cafés allowed [participants] to share, hear and be heard in their distress. … Benefits were long-lasting, not by encouraging ‘more action’ but because people felt resourced, and able to remain engaged with their pursuit of a better future for all of us, without becoming so overwhelmed.”

Trying to spread the word about the positive benefit of Climate Cafés has not been easy, but using social media and even some free advertising at the Westgate Centre is gradually reaching out to a larger and wider range of people. This kind of support often reaches a very limited audience. Many Oxford residents would find acknowledging climate anxieties difficult with so many competing pressures in their own, and their families’ lives. But the group remains hopeful that they can continue to reach out and offer compassionate listening across our community and remain available for people to return to regularly or when they feel the need. 

Monthly Oxford climate cafés start again after the summer on 14 September. Check dates and RSVP via the group’s Meetup page or just turn up at 2.30 on the day of the café. No climate café in your area? Contact the group to ask for help setting one up.