British Academy publishes ‘Climathon’ project outputs

The British Academy has now published the outputs from its ‘Shared Understandings of a Sustainable Future research programme’, under which the ‘Rural Climathons’ research project was funded.

The project developed a participatory methodology, Climathons, to bring farmers, rural land use stakeholders, NGOs and citizens together. We organised events in two livestock farming communities in Cumbria and Cornwall, where participants debated and developed local net zero solutions to promote sustainable agri-food futures.

This was one of a suite of projects supported by the British Academy which ‘aim to draw on learnings from the Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts disciplines to develop relevant and timely UK policy insights that consider the role of people, communities and institutions in the transition to net zero’.

Rural Climathon Playbook Process Model

Professor Damian Maye led the research and was assisted by PhD student Pippa Simmonds, Professor Julie Ingram (CCRI), Professor Abigail Gardner (University of Gloucestershire) and CCRI placement student Sofia Raseta.

Details of all eight projects and their respective outputs are now available on the British Academy website.

Regarding the outcomes of the project, Damian Maye said “it is great to see all of the project outputs in one place now, which as a collective shows how important the role of people, communities and institutions across the country can contribute towards the challenging goal of achieving Net Zero. The team from the CCRI and University of Gloucestershire are incredibly proud of our contribution to this collective and we hope to continue with similar methods we used in this project in future research”.

One of the outputs from the project, was a specific microsite where all documentation and outputs has been collated. This can be accessed on the CCRI website.