Activating academia...

using the People’s Emergency Briefing


A guide to using the film to start overdue conversations and invigorate climate & nature knowledge and action in science and academia

version 1.0 - 13th April 2026. This draft will be updated in response to ongoing feedback and learning from sessions.


Science and academia, and all of us who are part of them, have powerful roles to play in responding to the escalating Climate & Nature Emergency... However, change in academic institutions has been slow, and we’re liable to encounter resistance (and even denial) when we try to accelerate it. The People’s Emergency Briefing is a new tool in our belt: it’s a 50-minute film created from the talks delivered by nine leading UK experts at last November's National Emergency Briefing. It synthesises the escalating climate threats we face and the cascading impacts on the UK’s food, health, energy and national security systems, highlights the enormous benefits of genuine emergency action and makes all of this accessible, engaging and relatable through reactions from ordinary people (including some familiar faces 👀). 

The film invites everyone not just to hear the evidence, but also to discuss how we respond here, now, together. Key to the efficacy of this will be in how screenings are planned, facilitated and built from across the diverse communities the film is shown within. This guide sets out tailored approaches and resources for scientists and/or academia audiences, intended to support screenings and wider actions within universities, research institutes and learned societies etc. Your session can either stand alone or to fit into an existing meeting slot or programme such as:

  • 💬 a regular departmental seminar, or conference session
  • 📑 a teaching session on a course, or shared between courses
  • 🔬 smaller group meetings such as lab meetings or student/university society events  

Academic audiences’ contexts


Social science research shows that the vast majority of UK academics want to be part of climate action, but feel overworked and disempowered. Some of the specific challenges in scientist and academic settings include:

  • Scheduling and time constraints for an audience who generally already feel overstretched and sensitive to competing pressures of a competitive often-insecure work environment. 
  • Lack of institutional or leadership support for climate action, and fears that advocating for change will come at a personal and/or career cost as a result. 
  • Complacency: it can be easy to assume that science professionals or academics intuitively understand the underlying issues, but most of us have never had formal training that conveys the scale, urgency and breadth of the Emergency, and the siloing of disciplines can enhance our underestimation of its interacting, systemic risks.
  • ‘Intellectualising’ is a very prevalent psychological defence for this group, who are (in my experience) prone to getting drawn into rational-seeming debates that avoid emotional engagement and constructive discussions about the wider or most pressing issues (focussing on specific ‘interesting’ aspects, debating nuances, critiquing the resources or messengers etc.)


The session format and guidance are designed to circumvent some of these issues, but as part of planning your session(s) I recommend taking these challenges and others like them into account, considering how you might mitigate them for your specific audience(s). These sessions aren’t just about delivering information: they’re about confronting difficult realities and negotiating a whole host of emotional, psychological, societal and structural barriers to find a way forward together. To do this we have to move beyond the more detached, ‘objective’ ways academics might feel most familiar or comfortable communicating.

Let's be asking ourselves: "How do we care about the people in the room as much as we care about the content we are delivering?”

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Linda Aspey
Climate Psychology Alliance (in a recent training session)

Planning your session... in 5 steps



1) Arrange a time and book your space

  • Ideally secure at least 90 mins, to allow time for a post-screening discussion. If you are restricted to one hour, see if you can book the same slot again a week’s or fortnight’s time for a follow-up session. Booking a time at the end of a work day or just before a lunch break can be ideal, as it allows for the audience to continue their discussions informally afterwards. 
  • Contact organisers of existing seminar series or meetings to see if you can align with their programme. This can help avoid adding to scheduling pressures and can additionally boost attendance, as these events will often have an established audience and promotional infrastructure. 
  • The space needs to be equipped with a decent screen and speakers. The film is available in a broad range of formats and can be played via a laptop.

2) Design your discussion structure and the key questions/areas you want to cover

  • Review the facilitation guides from the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA). For a limited time they’re also running workshops based on this. 
  • Suggested formats and questions are below.


3) Plan a follow-up process to help support the audience, continue conversations and build momentum. This could include:

  • Listening circles or more informal opportunities to talk about emotional responses to the film and the wider Emergency. 
  • Learning sessions, either on the subject matter e.g. workshops like the Climate Fresk, or on frameworks for sustainable change, such as the ‘doughnut’ model for academia. 
  • Action-focussed discussions and activities.
  • A communication channel for participants to continue discussions and stay connected (WhatsApp group, Slack channel etc).


4) Advertise your session(s) via:

  • Personal invitations, especially to leadership figures. You may find the NEB’s sample wording helpful as a starting point for emails. 
  • Bulletins and social media of relevant institutes, departments and/or and societies.
  • Posters on noticeboards (and wherever tea breaks happen!). Customisable templates are available here & here. 


5) Register your screening to receive the film.

Session format(s)


***A template script you can adapt is available from the NEB***


Welcome (5 mins), warmly thanking the audience for joining. You might:

  • Share the plan for the session.
  • Acknowledge the difficulties we can face engaging with these issues, and that a broad range of responses are both likely and valid.


Film screening (50 mins)


Check in/break (5-10 mins)

  • Invite the audience to share reflections/immediate responses with nearest neighbours. This can be an opportunity for a comfort break for those who need one.  
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If you are limited to an hour, close the session after the film screening by:

1) Validating the spectrum of responses people may be having. You could invite them to share a one-word emotion they’re experiencing, a one-sentence reflection, or the question they are going away with. 

2) Signposting next steps: If you have pre-planned a dedicated follow up meeting/workshop share the details and ask attendees if they can commit to joining together again. If not, end with some tangible calls to action (see below).

Discussion (30-45 mins),

via...

a) Small group conversations, encouraging reflection on what kind of activity currently feels most realistic or appropriate, as suggested in the facilitation guide. You might also want to expand your discussion to focus in on what's possible, motivating or likely to be effective within your specific setting, drawing on the discussion prompts below.

or

b) Panel discussion, a less participatory format, but one which may still be appropriate for certain larger events. 

👉 Rather than to ‘debate’ the issues, panellists who audiences are likely to resonate with should be selected and briefed to hold a constructive conversation. I recommend panellists from a range of career stages/roles who have all moved from knowing about the problems we face to acting on them in a variety of ways. They could draw on their own experiences to respond to questions like:

  • What puts scientists/academics in a strong position to accelerate change? Some prompts and ideas here
  • What could we be doing here that helps push forward action for climate and nature? Some prompts and ideas here
  • What barriers to action do we face here in this institution?
  • How can those barriers be overcome? Some prompts and ideas here
  • What are the synergies between climate action other challenges? e.g. in health & social care, national & institutional resilience*


Close (5 mins) with thanks, next steps, and your chosen calls to action


*Intensifying financial, geopolitical and social justice issues are often framed as competing pressures, as reasons not to prioritise climate action… but when in reality these issues are interconnected and the actions needed to respond to them are overlapping and complementary . Climate action brings us cleaner air, cheaper energy, food security, greater resilience etc with it huge benefits across society. This is an important and often energising point to emphasise. 

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Calls to Action


Ultimately the aim is to encourage participants to organise within and beyond academia, working together on strategies and actions both to engage leadership figures and to build cultural change from the ‘ground up’... but this is likely to be an intimidatingly broad proposition to start from! Tailor your calls-to-action to feel relevant and accessible to your audience. These could include invitations to: 


1) Share the People's Emergency Briefing

by running screenings and discussions for colleagues (especially leadership teams), research group, societies, clubs etc, and in wider communities, outside of science/academia.


2) Engage politicians & other leadership figures,

for example with the ‘asks’ of the NEB (a government-wide emergency briefing and a televised public briefing). You could highlight any established connections your group has that could be leveraged. 


3) Connect with action groups and communities. 

Signpost e.g. local and institutional environmental networks but also opportunities for this group to continue engaging with one another at follow-up sessions or via a dedicated communication channel

Selected Resources


Articles

For deeper reading, but also as frameworks and inspiration for ongoing conversations and actions, for example in ‘journal club’ formats


Rethinking academia in a time of climate crisis Urai & Kelly, 2023, eLife

which uses the ‘doughnut’ model to examine how academia currently operates outside of planetary and human limits, and outlines steps towards turning it around. This has been used around the world as a starting point for discussions and practical workshops.


“No research on a dead planet” Thierry et al., 2023, Frontiers in Education

which examines the ‘socially organised denial’ that persists in institutions, and how overcoming this is essential to preserving the conditions where academia can continue. 


From publications to public actions Gardner et al, 2021, Frontiers in Sustainability

which discusses the roles universities could be playing in facilitating academic advocacy and activism 


The biospheric emergency calls for scientists to change tactics Racimo et al., 2022, eLife

A manifesto for scientists to step up to more radical forms of action, in proportion with the scale of the Emergency


From Abi

Some of my own relevant writing includes:


NEB Resources