Hosting & Facilitating a Climate Café Listening Circle: May-June Cohort

Dates:

• Session 1: Monday 19 May (2pm - 5pm UK time)
• Session 2: Monday 2 June (2pm - 5pm UK time)
• Session 3: Monday 30 June (2pm - 3.30pm UK time)

It is essential that you have attended a Climate Café Listening Circle as a participant before doing this training. Please see more about this below.

What is a Climate Café Listening Circle?

It is a simple, welcoming, empathetic process that offers a confidential space where people - often strangers - can meet to talk about their fears and uncertainties about climate crisis, nature loss and a rapidly changing planet. As the name implies, a Climate Café Listening Circle (CCLC) focuses on listening and sharing. There is no advice, no talks, and no expectation that people will join a cause or take particular action. This is psychologically important, helping to create a supportive atmosphere. These are spaces to talk and normalise sharing often difficult feelings about climate change (feelings which in many societies are generally avoided) and to gain comfort from meeting others who also want to talk about it. Talking together about emotions is a strong contributor to psychological health because it gives participants an experience of support, companionship, and relief.

Whilst the climate and ecological crisis is usually the main focus of the CCLC, sometimes people bring other related issues such war, pandemics, societal decline, and the collapse of what we know. All of these are welcome.

The sessions are led by trained facilitators who also take part in sharing their feelings and thoughts, as we are all impacted by these crises.

Everyone 18 and over is welcome at these, and we also have Youth Support Spaces (eventbrite.com) for those aged 18-25.

For more on CCLCs, please visit this link (eventbrite.co.uk).

Are there any requirements to participate in this training?

Yes. You do not need a therapeutic background for this training but it is essential that you have attended a Climate Café Listening Circle (CCLC) as a participant before starting.

This will need to be a CCLC that:

• focuses on feelings rather than action
• is clear that it is not a space for discussing or debating climate policy, climate science or climate action.

This particular CCLC format has been developed by the Climate Psychology Alliance and has a focus on listening and feelings - distinct from those with a speaker or action focus. Participating in a Café that focuses on feelings before you come on the training will help to support you on your own journey of acknowledging, expressing and processing your climate and eco-related emotions. It will also help you to explore whether you feel ready to become a facilitator of a CCLC, and if you feel prepared to hear and hold what comes up in the group.

If you cannot get a place on one of CPA’s CCLCs listed via this link (eventbrite.co.uk), please do join our waiting lists as spaces regularly become available at short notice, an internet search or a browse on Eventbrite should produce some offered by other organisations. You can check with the organiser if it meets the criteria above.

What does the CCLC Facilitator training consist of?

The CPA CCLC training programme is divided into three sessions, over 7.5 hours, for closed cohorts of 16 people, which will help you to build a community of peers for ongoing support. You will have the same CPA facilitators throughout.

CCLCs are always facilitated by two people so you might like to attend this training with a potential co-host, especially if you want to run in person CCLCs. It's also possible you may meet a potential co-host in this training cohort (for online or local Cafes) but we cannot guarantee this. Once you are trained you can become a part of the wider CPA CCLC facilitator community too.

Session 1: 3 hours

After you have attended a Climate Café Listening Circle (CCLC) as outlined above, this session provides another CCLC, this time followed by reflection and discussion in small groups. This gives you the opportunity to more fully process the experience of being a participant, what it is like to be in a group of strangers talking about this and share how you feel during and afterwards. It will also help you to get to know your cohort peers better. The post CCLC session format will be interactive, working in pairs and small group breakouts, and large group discussion.

Session 2: 3 hours (usually 7-10 days after Session 1)

Prior to this session we will send you some reading materials – these are optional but will be very useful for you to build greater understanding so we do encourage you to read them.

The session will explore facilitation and other skills, the underlying climate psychology upon which the CCLC structure and approach is built, creating an environment of fairness, safety, and belonging, and some of the practical aspects of setting up a CCLC, in person or online. Again the session format will be interactive, working in pairs and small group breakouts, and large group discussion.

Session 3: 1.5 hours (usually one month after Session 2)

This session is a chance to regroup and reconnect, share any new thinking you’ve each had, or CCLC hosting experiences, and explore any new questions that have come up.

How much does it cost?

• Employer-sponsored non-member rate: £130 (If your employer is a large or more established organisation paying for your attendance, please pay the funded non-member rate)
• Self-funded non-member rate: £90
• Member rate: £60
• Reduced rate: £40

You’re welcome to join CPA and purchase the member rate ticket. Since you will have attended the training, you’re eligible for membership with an additional two months free of charge, and you can cancel anytime. However, please note that since the training spans several months, if you cancel before the last session, you’ll no longer be eligible to complete the training.

If you’d like to join, please click here (climatepsychologyalliance.us8.list-manage.com). You will be asked to provide your contact details and we will then send you an email inviting you to pay via our new community platform. Please follow the links in the email for climate café training workshop attendees.

Due to the nature of a closed cohort, we can only offer a refund if you cancel your ticket 7 days before the first session.

To participate in this programme we ask that you commit to:

• Going to a Climate Cafe before you start this programme, as described above.
• Attending the 3 sessions in full; this is a closed cohort, aimed at helping you to build a community of trusted peer CCLC facilitators for support, buddying, and potentially collaboration*
• Informing CPA before the first session if you can no longer participate because spaces are subsidised by CPA and we have a waiting list – please email admin@climatepsychologyalliance.org and we can allocate your place to someone else.
• Keeping the Zoom link private – this is personal to you. It helps to keep the space safe, and with the appropriate ratio of participants to facilitators.
• Having support for your CCLC hosting / facilitation work. This could be by having a facilitator buddy from the cohort to talk with, or getting regular supervision, independently, or for CPA members, through our free, regular CCLC supervision sessions.

*If you unavoidably miss a session, we are unable to give you a refund; however we can potentially allocate you to another cohort for the missed session, subject to numbers on that cohort.