 Hello. Hello. Hello again. All right, we'll just wait for people to jump on. There they come. How's everybody doing tonight? Give people another minute or two. Well, while we wait for people, just remember that we are recording this evening and if you don't want to be on camera to go ahead and turn that off and to also keep yourself muted while our president and it's going on so you're not distracted. And a question for you as you check in in the chat. Tell us something about your prior experience with press releases, media, story sharing work. If anyone feels like they want to drop that in the chat. While we wait and tonight we're going to be talking about storytelling, communication skills, digital tactics, art tools, and storytelling. We have some really great folks presenting tonight. We have Thanu Froh who's our US communications manager at 350.org. We have Avery who's a US digital campaigner at 350.org. And we are graced with having Ingrid tonight. She's the Arts and Cultural Organizing Coordinator from PCM. So a big welcome to all of our trainers this evening. And just to remind everybody as of tomorrow we have one month until rise. So we are coming down on the wire. I hope everybody's excited and I hope everybody's event planning is going well and always remember that you can email me at amy.gray at 350.org and I'll drop that in the chat if you need any help organizing or have any questions. And with that I'm gonna hand it over to Thanu to start talking about media communications. Great. Hi everyone. Thanks so much for having me. My name is Thanu Yakupitiage. I am the US communications manager at 350. And I am coordinating a lot of the communications for the rise of climate jobs and justice marches across the country with a focus on California. And I'm here today to really talk about just the role of media and communications in storytelling and I'm really going to focus on really how to build a press plan to maximize your storytelling. So you can follow along with me in the presentation from slide four which is the opening slide to my presentation. So slide five. I want to talk about sort of the power of the story. And I think one of the things that people say about this day and age is that if you don't take a photo of something, you don't record something, if you don't amplify it, your event maybe didn't actually happen. It's more about how is it that you can actually get your story out there so that it's more than just you and the people who are at the event who know about it. And so amplification is a huge part of organizing. It's a huge part of advocacy and it's a huge part of what we do in the climate movement. So when I say communications, what I mean is traditional media. So in my team, and by the way, Lindsay Mayman is also on the phone. She's on my team and she'll actually also be staying on to answer your questions because I have to go a little bit early. And the two of us and our other colleague, Danny, make up the communications team at 350. And we do a lot of work with traditional media. So we work with reporters. We work through the press to tell strategies as stories of our campaigns and movement. And for us, communications is storytelling. It's really about building buzz about our working campaigns through media platforms. And it's about getting news. It's really about making sure that our angle on climate, on climate justice is really also being told by the media. And we try to do that in proactive ways. And we really try to elevate people who are really representative of their struggles and their local areas to be the ones who are speaking to the press. And so what can communications do for you with your rise for climate jobs and justice action? Coms can help you build buzz. It can help you reach new audiences. It can help you pressure and hold decision makers accountable. It helps to educate the public and it helps to sort of validate existing supporters of your work. And so if you go to slide six around amplifying your action, when I say amplifying, I mean, using media as a tool to get your message out far and wide. And essentials of amplifying your action include several things. So if you are the lead or the host of your rise to climate jobs and justice action in your area, identifying a communications point, I know that for some of these actions, it might be like very few of you working on it. But if and where possible, it would be, it would be great to designate someone else to be your communications point. And that communications point would help to build a press list in your local area. I'm sorry, I'm seeing some chats. Do people not have the slides? Oh, thanks, Avery. So I'm on slide six right now. And I started on slide four. Where was I? Yeah, so around building your own press list, the easiest way to do that is to first, like really assess like, you know, who your local media is. So there's usually, you know, local reporters or local news desk and to start with gathering the press information, phone numbers, contact emails for your local news desks. And then you can sort of expand from there. And one way is in which 350 can help is that you're welcome to either email me or Lindsay. I have our contact information on one of the other slides in the stack. You can also email us if you're looking for specific contact information of a certain, you know, media entity and we can get that for you. And putting together a press plan includes things like putting together sort of a plan of like when you're going to be sending out media advisories for the lead up weeks before an action, getting together quotes of relevant spokespeople for your press release and putting together a spokespeople roster of folks who can speak towards the event and what you're highlighting. If you go to slide seven and on the comms role in spokespeople. So like I said before, it's really important to have a communications lead if you can because otherwise one person is juggling too many roles. And so the communications lead is in charge of the action media plan. That person is point on press outreach, answering background questions and connecting reporters to your spokespeople. And one thing to note, the comms lead is not necessarily a spokesperson. They're usually the one who like connects up reporters to spokespeople. The comms lead is someone who crafts and sends all press materials and also tracks and shares press hits. And what the communications lead is not is not necessarily a spokesperson and not necessarily a lead on social media and digital. So the way we like to do it at 350 is we actually keep our traditional media comms folks separate from our digital folks. That may not always be possible. But if there is potentially another person who could be doing social media work, that's usually makes the load a little bit less heavy on one person. And so then for spokespeople, one thing to really think about as you're putting together your action is like who are the two to three top people you know from your action who's part of the organizing who can have the role of speaking publicly on behalf of your campaign or on behalf of the action. And so your comms point is going to help to identify those people. And one thing you should look out for and this will come in the materials that we'll share with you is that I'm going to be sending a form that you can fill out that will where you can specify who your comms point is for your action and who some of your spokespeople are. And that would be great for just us to know as we're coordinating things on a national level because we just want to know you know who's the comms point for your action that we can really quickly get in touch with. If I get a call from a reporter who really wants to talk to someone from Miami, for instance, I'm going to reach out to the comms point and the comms point will have a sense of who those spokespeople are. So we want to be able to share this information back and forth so that we can more easily connect y'all with press. If you go to slide eight this is on pitching and communicating your story. So one of the most important thing about when you're planning an action is being able to communicate that the action is happening. And so once you've built your press list or know which press you're reaching out to, writing your local reporters so you can send them the media advisory that you've put together or you can even send them a personal note. I find that you know if you're sending a media advisory to a bunch of reporters certainly you can bcc them but it always helps to send a personal note. Also calling reporters, but when you call reporters you should really keep it short and with key information about the action because reporters are always slammed with people trying to get them to cover their events. And also do some research like is there a local reporter who has covered climate in your area before that you could reach out to? Because knowing the particular interest of a reporter can also really help with like making sure that what you're doing is of interest to the reporter. I see that we have some new folks I'm just gonna repost the slide deck and so folks can follow along. I'm on slide eight and I'm moving on to slide nine. So on pitching and communicating your story, keep it local. So if you have an action in Minnesota or in Texas like there's a way in which you can really connect what's going on in your own community to you know larger global national or state movements. And so in this case because the rise for climate actions it's a it's a national and a global day of action. You're basically connecting up your local action and your local story to something bigger. And you know that's why in like in your media advisers you should always say like this is part of hundreds of events happening around the country and the world to push for our elected officials to take action on climate. So that really connects the local up to the global. But keeping a local like being very specific also about like why it is that like your rising for climate in your area is also going to be of interest to press. Keep it timely so a question that reporters will often ask is like why now. So definitely keep up to date with what's local and in the national news. You know so so for example right now in California there's wildfires brewing like across the world there's all sorts of climate impacts and so we've really been using that as a timely way to really connect up our rise actions to you know the realities of climate impacts across the world. There's also been some recent press news articles from the New York Times magazine to The Atlantic that have been making arguments about how it's going to be impossible to fix climate change for example. And so we've been really responding to those and also using these like big stories as a way to also push our rise to climate actions. And again keep it simple reporters are impatient keep your column pitch simple and make it personal. I think the one thing I've learned from doing comms work is that personal stories and like why people have a mistake in the fight is why people want to cover reporters want to cover something and while it's easy to refer to numbers facts and figures really having good spokespeople who have interesting stories whether it's you know someone who's impacted by a pipeline or whether it's you know a mom who's fighting for the future of her kid like those are the kinds of stories that really resonate with the press. Slide 10 around building a press list so again like I said you should really get info on your local news desk and if you need support in reaching out to outlets email us and we can help and I put Lindsay Mayman's contact information and her email is just Lindsay at 350.org and I'm writing a media advisory on on the slide slide 10 I've linked to some training materials and you can take a look at that it really shows you how to write a media advisory how to write a press release and just so that so so that you know the difference between a media advisory and a press release I'm sorry if this is redundant and media advisory is really short it basically is has like a title a stasi title it has the what when where why of your action and you send this out before an action so I would recommend you send this out two weeks ahead of September 8th again one week out and again a day before but also during that time you should be pitching to press so don't expect that you're just going to send out a media advisory and then miraculously you're going to get pressed you're going to also have to do the proactive calling and pitching as well a press release is what goes out after your event and this should include photos so this is where you have more extensive quotes and more extensive paragraphs about like what happened you know during your action and what the relevance of the action is and on slide 11 there's actually we've linked templates for your advisories and press releases so you can take a look these are templates for the rise for climate jobs and justice actions and again like these are just suggestions of language you can obviously use whatever language you want but these are just some suggested templates that you're free to use to make things easier for you and then I also often get a question the question of like well if I get interviewed what am I going to say so that's why you have to do some prep prep so if you have designated spokes people you should help help those spokespeople to prepare you could do some mock interviews with your spokespeople but those spokespeople are the ones who should do the interviews like if you are the comms point you're the one who's sort of connecting the press to your spokespeople something that I took from sierra clubs materials kiss keep it simple stupid at least for tv speak speak slowly and make sure that you're speaking in a way that is really relevant to what you know everyday people you know listen to so what I do when I speak on tv is that I speak as if I'm speaking to a teenager because if you use too many big words you're actually just confusing people and you don't actually get your message across because it's it's too complex and always when you're getting interviewed have some key talking points already in your head and start with your strongest statement and be passionate and sort of lead with positive solutions and practice in advance so you can practice in the mirror you can put together some talking points and make sure you just have this in advance for you and then on slide 13 I've actually just linked to a toolkit full of resources for interviews pitching press material templates that my colleague Lindsay put together so again feel free to take a look at that as well and lastly on slide 14 just you know once your action is wrapped up it doesn't mean that you're like okay great everything is done there's a lot of post-action follow-up that needs to happen so one of the things to keep in mind is tracking and collecting press so keep track of press for your actions set google alerts for key key spokespeople's names for rise for climate jobs and justice climate rally any other relevant search words with maybe your location as well that'll help you track press another thing that helps with post-action follow-up is signing in press at the event or getting reporters cards so at the event itself you should have like a comms point person and that person can either be like as press come to the designated press area you can be checking them in on like a clipboard or you can be getting their cards and so what you can do is you can follow up with that press after the event to see if they wrote a story or broadcasted one and to potentially get the link and this is also a really good way to keep in touch with reporters especially if you're planning on continuing to work on this issue in your area this helps you to really build a press list and really build relationships with these reporters for any other actions that happen after the one that you're working on currently that's all i have are we doing questions now amy sure we can definitely and then if you need to go of course and then lindsey's here so she can help answer questions but if anybody has any questions um about the slide presentation or the media and press stuff please don't hesitate to drop it in the chat and i will field your call your questions and if we don't have any questions then we'll move on to avry can you hear me okay yes okay excellent so i'm going to um attempt to share my screen really quickly here we are so so sorry great as this presentation loads i'm here today to talk to you all about digital storytelling which is a really integral part of organizing for any day of action and also just a skill set that you should use in your local organizing outside of rise so oh you want a second there you go now you can see it um so the really amazing thing about digital stories heling and social platforms is that you're able to connect with people from all across the world it's so important that we stay really rooted in our communities with our organizing but by being able to share our stories on social platforms we're able to see ourselves in our communities in places that are are everywhere across the nation and so you know just posting by yourself isn't isn't going to be enough um you really got to get the word out there to make a big impact and the tips that found you just shared are really vital and important and can help you to do so but if you aren't equipped um to with any of those skill sets it's really easy to just be able to pick up your phone get on social um and start reaching a ton of people oh lovely okay cool um so actions are really flashy catchy events they're a really great turning point to grab folks' attentions and bring them towards the issues that you work on year-round so so be sure to during RISE on the day of action be sure to be doing a lot of live coverage things are going to get really crazy and hectic and there's going to be so much going on but even if you can snap photos or videos that you can share after the fact um that will do a really great job to direct folks towards your local campaigns afterwards so what are some of the best ways to get the word out about or to showcase your action facebook live I'm sure um most of you are familiar with facebook and I'm sure most of you have seen a facebook live at one point but it out of all the platforms right now um and live streaming options it currently still gets the best reach so you're able to broadcast from say your local um 350 chapter page or a PCM hub if you have a facebook page or your personal facebook page be sure to use hashtags with anything that you post in order to connect it with RISE more broadly be sure to include your hashtags um and also you know facebook live is not just about pointing and shooting a video um it's a chance for you to be able to talk to your audience for you to allow others who you're taking part in the action to speak their piece as well um if you don't have access to mobile data or things are just so hectic that you don't have adequate time or energy to devote to a facebook live just record video um afterwards you're the great thing about that is that you're able to share it all across platforms and not only across platforms you can shoot it in a quick email or text to others in your community as well if you're not so keen on facebook who would give in everything that's going on wouldn't blame you um instagram stories is a great alternative to facebook live the difference being with instagram stories that people would already have to be following your page um after 24 hours everything that you post on your story goes away and not all of your followers followers will always receive a notification that you've posted a story or have done instagram live and instagram live i'm sorry i should have said this a second ago instagram live functions similarly to facebook live um pictures classic way to showcase events rallies marches great to post some on instagram um it's really important that you're not just posting photos of a catch a sign with a catchy slogan with everything that you share be thinking about the personal narrative behind it try to showcase faces try to showcase showcase the actual people and environments that are being affected and that you're out here rallying for um once you have those photos share them on instagram facebook twitter send them around yes so in thinking about what the best way is for you to cover your event think on these a couple of these questions what sort of equipment do you have access to do you simply have a mobile phone that has mobile data or it could connect to wi-fi do you have a really nice uh or just a good dslr camera that takes great high quality photos that you would probably outperform the camera on your phone how much of a lift do you want this media to be with rise the thing then any day of action the key one of the key things is to be timely you don't want to back load your media that's coming out the day of as presently as possible you should really try to be pushing out that content that people can sort of follow along with and then afterwards you're able to send out more content um that dives deeper into the stories about why this is happening you're also able to frontload that content if you would like if you'd like to start writing op-eds or blog posts or anything like that and sharing on your channels but be thinking about how much of a time commitment you really want to put into this and if it's a minimal time commitment then focus on the day of action itself um think through what platforms you have access to and not only what platforms you have access to but which platforms you have the largest following on and if it's not yourself and you have access to your local community your pages think about which page it makes the most sense to share on um pages for instance on facebook are able to cross post videos and other content so be thinking about how you can get the most traffic towards your media which form of media do you want to use just kind of touched on that and then something long form or short form for instance something short form could be you walking around at your local residence snapping pictures of people and just getting sort of like a sentence or two about why they're there and posting like four or five of those photos and those quotes on your instagram pretty short form or do you want to do something long form that involves you um shooting a fair amount of video and getting footage from several different locations as well as the day of the action to tell the broader story hit on the broader narrative that really encapsulates what's happening in your community and why your folks are rising up both options are great again it's how much time that you're able to put into it and you also need to be thinking about the goals of your campaign and your rise action so what are some snazzy things that people like to see that grabs their attention people love to see preparation and the work that goes behind days of action you all have been working so incredibly hard to pull these events together and honestly show off your efforts take you know if you're doing an art build go ahead and take a few photos or a quick instagram story of the amazing art that's being worked on um if you're having a general like mass meeting about your rise event snap a picture of the crowd or maybe some of the speakers who are addressing the crowd people love to see what's go what has gone into crafting these uh these days of action um when things get started that is the best time for you to really start hitting with some of that short form content um or if you're doing instagram live or facebook live be sure to introduce and restate i can't just as enough restate throughout what is happening why you are there um and the hashtag or whatever page or whatever it is that you've decided to use that they should be following along with let them know hey i'm avery brains i'm here in washington dc and we're about to kick off our rise for climate march thousands have gathered here today xyz as an example um if you find anybody having a particularly great time we're doing things that are uh really interesting say that you have folks who have gone all out and have dressed up for your rally or march or action whatever it may be um pick out the fun things that are in the crowd if you have musicians at your event record a little bit of them um anything that is sort of stands out from the typical march with signs photos i would definitely encourage you to showcase um all of our actions across the country are are really unique and we should show that there are variances in all of them depending on the nature of your action it is incredibly important to if it's more geared towards civil disobedience or nvda um say it's like a benefit concert or a rally with a really um well high profile well-known speaker be sure to position yourself to capture that moment of escalation prior to when it happens and again restate why you're there what is happening and what the larger goals are um this takes a little bit of pre-planning if it's i'd like nonviolent uh if it's nvda then you know timing can get a little odd sometimes and it may not be the easiest to do but always try to strategically pre-position yourself to be able to capture that moment of escalation um and finally keep it personalized we all have our stories about why we do this work everybody has a story about why how climate change is impacting your lives whether or not they know it make sure that you're reaching out to people coming into contact with them and talking to them about why they are at your rise event that's really what folks want to hear we want to show we want a strong force of unity from across the world that folks can fall along with and see like hey people across the world are rising up for climate and it's because we're all frustrated where things with where things are at but we're all incredibly hopeful and are going to work together to craft the world that's just inequitable that we can all live in for future generation i will also plug at this time using hashtag rise for climate or hashtag why we rise we've been following along of those hashtags all day long and they will probably gain the most traction so be sure with your media that you're putting your social media that you're putting out to use those some fun little storytelling tips again stories are about people we can't really tell a story without a subject so be sure to hit on those personal narratives you don't always have to even though I have just instructed you to root things in why you're where you are and why you're there things don't have to be static and stagnant in terms of time and place are these climate flights are dynamic they are long-standing and they're going to continue happening what happens on September 8th is going to set the stage for what's going to continue happening forward going forward stories speak the audience's language two big points on this one number one excuse me number one we need to keep language justice in mind if at all possible so if you live in an area where another predominantly spoken and you have access to somebody who speaks said language try and incorporate them or I get them to add to your content as well because we want it to be as accessible for everyone as possible number two somebody once gave me a piece of advice that has really held true in my time of working in digital and that is speak to your audience as though they are in the eighth grade doesn't sound so nice but really what they were trying to say is just keep it simple keep it succinct keep it to the point we can we're all really creative people we can tend to get really flowery and long-winded with our language speak the audience's language where are we what do what are we doing why are we doing this give them what they want to know again rooting it in the personal narrative speak to their emotions as well you can do that through photo and video and it's easy to convey those emotions through video and photos as well stories have at least one moment of truth they also have a clear meaning again being precise succinct and articulating your goals and objectives for why you're rising you know there's a reason that everybody in these communities are banding together to make a stand what is it that we want climate justice let your community members speak for themselves there's a lot of really great advocates such as yourselves that are that are out here but sometimes we get into a little bit of an echo chamber hearing the same climate advocate voices over and over again rise will be a really great chance to let some of your communities members speak up and talk about their experience and what they are doing or what they would like to do within your communities audiences do more easily and speak to them like they're in the eighth grade I would argue at this point given without social media has developed and transformed maybe try to speak to them like they're in like they're in like fifth or sixth grade people have really short attention spans try not to make a fight like definitely don't do a facebook live that's an hour and a half people are going to drop off after like 10 minutes unless it's something that's really crazy engaging direct action or something that's so fascinating that everybody's fixated on it can't look away that's usually not the case so try to keep your things really succinct and I will share that video research or resource on the training stage that's about it for me does anybody have any questions I can also answer questions at the end I don't want to cut too much into yeah there was one somebody typed in the chat that was she said I usually include a logo of our group and the sponsoring group 350 in the press release I also attach separate graphics files to the email release is that helpful or not really necessary and I also include a photo image that is especially meaningful also useful in the press release question mark I am not going to answer the press release question because traditional comms is not my area of expertise well about Lindsay not to tap in Lindsay Lindsay do you mind taking that one while I ping Lindsay I can speak to I can speak to attaching files with oh Lindsay said yes photo and press release sorry having trouble getting off me no problem Lindsay um so that's good to know from the traditional column standpoint I am always going to encourage you to add share files of any graphics videos any content that can be shared out by your partners or other local community groups attaching them an email is a really great way to do so so yeah I would absolutely say that that is something that you should do if at all possible any other questions in the chat right now um any other things on folks mind cool if not you can I'll I'll be here at the end to answer questions so uh with that I am going to go and pass it off too good evening everyone can you hear me maybe I can get a nod from Avery Amy who I can see right now all right okay hey everyone my name is Ingrid Haftel I am PCMs Arts and Cultural Organizing Coordinator and I am going to ask for your participation this fine evening so will I get my presentation ready to share could you get out a pen pencil piece of paper boot up MS paint whatever will let you doodle for a second so do that I'm going to get my presentation up I'll be back with you in a second all righty can everyone see my presentation right on okay so I would love it if everyone could start by doodling drawing what climate justice means to you and I want you to draw it I don't want you to use any words and we'll take one minute to do this okay I was going to play some music while we did this but that was a little too ambitious for me this evening sorry okay you have another 30 seconds 10 seconds okay pencils down does anyone want to share what they came up with you can show you can hold it up I'll scroll through my video feed you could also enter in the chat box anyone have anything they want to share I'll share with you what I came up with you want to see what I came up with aha what do we have here okay Amy show us tell us what you drew I see that's a fist and a heart and a sun and an earth okay excellent what do we have Kate beautiful okay I think I see some mountains there might be a tree or geyser in the background some people with the hands linked loverly anyone else okay well if I miss you we can share at the end I'm gonna show share we just had like a major thunderstorm in Brooklyn here so this is like my water geyser spout it's our ground swell and then these are the balloons the unconnected unresponsive oppressive balloons up in the air unconnected to us right now and I want our ground swell to pour water down onto all of those balloons so you guys had some very wonderful thoughtful succinct ways of visualizing climate justice it can also be a little less literal as mine was but the point of that exercise was just to get us in the headspace of thinking about our organizing from a different perspective so using visuals to express what's meaningful and urgent about our work and how we can use art to make marginalized things that are marginalized are invisible visible so that's really the big idea when I'm talking to you all tonight about arts and cultural organizing and using that for storytelling it's not so much to make things pretty although you absolutely can and should do that with art but it's also to think about how we can use art to share our perspectives and make our struggles stand out and speak loudly to the world so I wanted to take a look at a specific example for folks who were at the 2014 people's climate march in New York this might look familiar maybe you've seen it before but I think this image really does speak a thousand words and if I could just ask you all to enter into the chat what do you notice about this photo and it can be anything from the most obvious to the least obvious what do you notice the people yep bright vibrant colors lots of yellow and sunny colors there are great signs absolutely there's a theme you see kids holding signs in front there's unity in numbers excellent yes absolutely so these are all things that we can see in just this one image one of the things that stands out to me about this image is you see front lines of crisis forefront of change so the frontline communities are in the front of this march the art and action visuals really hold space for those who are first and most impacted by climate change to tell their own stories and speak their struggle the great banners we see they're captions for the crowd right those powerful simple messages actually create a narrative about our movement with people in space and the colors and the simple visuals that sunflower even though it's a simple visual it's repeated and it really creates unity in a crowd that simple visual with unifying colors can be really powerful and then another thing that I think stands out about this image is everyone can participate from the master sign makers who made the front lines of crisis banner to folks drawing sunflowers right and making those pretty easy to make signs it's really accessible to all different skill levels and so with that in mind my big pitch to you tonight is that you start if you haven't already to think about art as an organizing strategy and I'll tell you a couple of reasons why that is the case art and cultural interventions can really open the doors of our organizing to people and create a sense of belonging so we know this is critical to building enduring grassroots power is those personal connections that people can make by making art together and sharing their stories through art visual art music dance performance I'm really going to focus on visual art tonight which means I'm going to leave out so much and there if you're interested in talking about stuff that's not covered here I'll absolutely make sure you have my email address and we can continue the conversation art can make information accessible and engaging so the information that we want to share with one another oftentimes can be complex can be intimidating but by using visual song performance and other artistic forms we can really humanize that work and make the complex systems we're fighting more accessible to people finally a big one is that art as an organizing strategy really supports artists and art in communities so it's an investment in arts and cultural work and it's also in the communities that artists and cultural producers work in I wanted to take a minute and actually I might skip over this for a second because I think we'll do this at the end with your ideas but I do want to come back to what you're specifically doing and where you are because you're going to be seeing a lot of images from past marches and mobilizations but what I really want to emphasize tonight is that it's not just about creating art for marches and rallies if you're holding a summit a teach-in a speaker's forum a town hall you can think about visual art and other art forms too it's not just about making signs and banners for marches although that's critical as well so what I want to do is just show you some images to kind of spark your imagination and get you thinking about potential projects you could take on for your events in September and through that I'm going to show you some art of every size shape and story so the first one we'll see here this is an image from 2014 as well poster so this is a poster created by an artist and activist some of you might know Fabiana Rodriguez this really iconic image defend our mother and poster projects can be a really accessible place to start it might mean connecting with one artist to help you tell the story of your action on September 8th or it might be inviting a range of artists to contribute their visions and really kind of opening up the field for letting people share their visions for what rising for climate jobs and justice looks like I wanted to point out that everything I show you tonight you will also be getting links to resources to help you create so that includes toolkits for how to pull this off what kind of supplies you might need and I'm also going to connect you to some resources in terms of networking and organizing together around arts and cultural organizing in the future banners so we saw a lot of those in the first image but clearly this is an accessible easy way to bring art and visuals into your event and it's also not just for rallies and marches if you're holding a summit or a teach in think about the space you're in and how you can use that space to tell a story and then liven it through visuals murals so if anyone's joining us from California you probably already know that one of the projects on the slate there is pulling off the biggest street mural in the world so communities from across California and beyond are coming together to create a massive street mural which is going to be amazing and we're also putting the call out to other communities who are interested in doing a street mural and have a toolkit for that as well it doesn't have to be permanent if you feel a little unsure about moving into public space there are all kinds of ways to do this but it's a really powerful participatory way to get folks together creating a visual that really tells your story this is just another example of simple visuals repeated right so these are flags and banners with a really simple wind and sun image and these are actually available on 350's website too so you'll get a link to that they can be screen printed print it out you can have a coloring party you can make your own but again just that repetition of simple images that you can brainstorm and vision together with your organizing crew and the artist you're connected with is a really powerful way to bring unity through the visuals in your organizing I wanted to do a couple plugs for some popular education tools that you can use too so what we have here are some examples of and I always these are cantistoria I always mess up the word but they're basically painted power points right that use visuals to communicate you can use these in trainings you can use these in rallies you can use these in teachings but using visuals to break down key pieces of our movement building so whether that's looking at the fossil fuel industry or looking at actions and local solutions that you want to communicate and organize around thinking creatively about how to tell that information and explain that information to people through simple visuals and then using those as training tools and then we have a couple groups this year who are interested in zines handouts short you know and thinking also economically and environmentally about printing but thinking about what folks might be able to take away from your event as well is there something that you want a tool that you want to create that folks can take and share collaborating with artists on visuals for a simple flyer or a zine or a poster that folks can take and bring to their communities is another relatively easy lift for a project for your September 8 actions and finally I just wanted to show an image of thinking about participatory projects how can you use art and visuals to invite people to tell their own stories and this right here is a project called the climate ribbon it's actually been touring and has been across this country and other parts of the globe over the past few years so you might have seen it before but I think it's a really powerful example what you do here all you need is ribbon in some way to tie the ribbon and what you do is that is you write down what you love and don't want to lose to climate change so a powerful example of a participatory project that can invite people in to tell their own stories and also really create a colorful art project on top of it what I wanted to do was note that what we just looked at was tiny the possibilities are gigantic we did not talk about music food poetry spoken word games performances dancing as I already said before there are a million ways to think about integrating art and culture into your events and certainly from an accessibility perspective thinking about engaging as many senses as possible is a great thing to think about as you're organizing for your events so I just wanted to pause here for a second I think I have about yeah eight minutes left and see if folks wanted to share any ideas anything that this is sparking questions you have we can also do this at the end of the presentation if folks don't have questions right now what I'm going to end with is just a couple tips for how to actually pull this off and then some resources and some actions you can take right away cool we've got time so I can sit here and wait for the questions to roll in thoughts anything that stood out to you things you want to talk more about okay get those questions queued up in your head because I will do this again and let's take a look at some simple tools and strategies for how to do it so first obvious right invite artists to the table early and often so if you're not and don't worry they're made I should have started by asking you know are there artists on the call and we should definitely get folks to chime in once we do Q&A here but if you're not connected to folks who can help you vision and do this work that's fine we can help you get connected to those folks you can also reach out to it might be folks other folks in the movement arts and cultural spaces in your community artists want to be asked to be involved in this work right it's meaningful work that's important and so more often than not you're going to be met with enthusiasm we're also launching an arts and cultural organizing hub which is an online space to connect artists and organizers together to think about this stuff so that's another great resource there's a link at the end of the presentation for visioning and collaboration it's really easy to kind of take the attitude of like we need a flyer we need a poster we need a logo and that's okay sometimes that's how it has to happen but whenever you can try to make space for collaborative visioning give folks to really think time creatively and boldly together because that really strengthens relationships create space for sharing personal stories and helps people develop a deeper connection to our movement dedicate money and resources so if you have a budget great pay artists and it doesn't have to be a lot and my advice is always to aim higher the next time fundraise the next time but even if it's just a little recognizing folks time and labor as artists and cultural producers is really important if you don't have a budget that's okay just be upfront about that and have a conversation about the resources that are available and think about other things that you might be able to trade maybe that's publicity maybe that's skill sharing you can think creatively about that you'll also want to think about a small budget for supplies but sometimes you can get those donated as well and again in the how-to kits we have there's information on the types of supplies you might need and finally post an art build so it sounds more intimidating than it is but that can just be an afternoon or evening of art making together whether that's making signs banners coming up with the poster design it's also a great organizing opportunity you can plan it just like you would plan any other organizing event remember to think about things that make the space and time accessible to people of all abilities think about food having activities pre-prepared so it's easy for folks to plug in and for kids parents and folks of all ages to participate as well and then make sure you've got a plan for connecting participants to next steps and actions we have a whole toolkit to help you plan an art build which you'll also be getting a link to finally Avery already covered this so I will not spend a lot of time here but take photos and videos in the making of art when it's out in the world when you're done with it take photos and videos and share them and I have our climate jobs and justice hashtag Avery shared rise for climate justice and other hashtags that we will also be using so I will defer to Avery on the hashtag but be sure to share those out in the world it's also something that if you are pitching media and they want to come and interview you art builds in spaces where you're creating art is a great visual backdrop for interviews and media opportunities and finally I'm just going to end with resources so I'll skip this but this is just a list of all the resources that you'll be getting after the call and I wanted to end with three actions you can take so you can join our PCM arts and cultural organizing hub you'll be getting a link to that it's going to be an exciting space where we'll share skills hopefully make space to create together and then connect each other to artists to organizing opportunities and projects for rise and beyond take some art and share some art we'll be getting a link to a whole cache of posters that we've created by artists across the country use them they can be adapted for your purposes and you can share them and use them in whatever way you want and finally tomorrow we have we're doing a really big push a digital push surge to get folks to get the word out about rise so we created this super short video that kind of shows off our posters so if you want to kind of get hype going for arts and cultural organizing please share this video tomorrow or share it with the artists in your lives to get them involved use it as a pitch to get folks into our movement and with that I'll end with questions and it seems like there's some rolling in so I'll take a minute to read through these guys ah beautiful okay Catherine Clark writes you can probably read this too but I'll do a dramatic reading our local river has played an important role in our community maybe we could make our march look like its own river by encouraging blue poster board for sign making maybe in wave shapes beautiful that's amazing there's actually lots of visual inspiration both on 350's website and ours for simple shapes and wave shapes some that you saw on the earlier images but that's a great beautiful simple visual that you could use and repeat to really create unity and I love that idea like a river of people let's see Lindsay popped in there with good example of photos in a press release so it sounds like we'll have sometimes certainly to answer more questions about comms, media and press releases Avery rise for climate hashtag rise for climate and hashtag why do you rise to tell your stories and then Lindsay also says we're inviting media to our NYC art build awesome that is the end of my presentation I'm happy to take more questions about arts and cultural organizing and storytelling or hand it over for a big Q and A with the other wonderful presenters at the bottom of the screen you have my email address so please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions about what I presented on and thank you so much for your work awesome thank you Ingrid so much the art portion is always so beautiful and the images are just amazing thank you for sharing those I hope everybody's excited now about all of the beautiful ways that you can tell the story of your action and your group and what you guys are putting together I know I feel really inspired after hearing everyone speak tonight does anybody I'll open it up for any final questions or does anybody want to tell us about what kind of art they're doing for Ryze is anybody brave enough to share with the group what they're doing Amy talk about your art oh um I yeah totally I will I am from Colorado and so I organize with 350 Colorado outside of 350.org and we're going to be highlighting the impacts of climate change on Colorado and the West so we're going to make big huge flames out of cardboard and we're going to do a dye in to symbolize all the people that have died in needless forest fires this last year and we're going to try to take an aerial photo from the top of the courthouse and then we're just I'm we're going to do a big art build at the UCC church they're giving us some space to paint banners and signs and make flames and then we're going to do empty chairs to symbolize some of our local elected leaders who are absent from fighting for climate so that's kind of what we have going on in Colorado right now does anybody else want to share I'll defer that question to Ingrid that's a great question you know what I would just say I don't see a problem with it but what I'd want to do is check in with the artist who made that art so I would suggest you get in touch with me and then we would just reach out to them to make sure they're okay with it that would be my recommendation you're welcome perfect does anybody else want to talk about any art they're doing for rise or anything they were inspired by this evening if not don't forget to text rise to 83224 so you can receive updates on rise in text form and share that with your group send it out in your emails your tweets your Facebook posts just so people can keep track of a rise because you get that text and it's something you read instantly rather than an email that you have to scroll through you know it's kind of a teaser so you want to share that with people and then all of the resources that Patty it's 83224 and I'll put it in the chat and I bit you I regotted before I did and then all the resources will be on the website tomorrow when we get the video uploaded and fixed up and we'll get that on the website along with all the resources that we shared tonight especially all the beautiful art kits and everything that Ingrid and our art director David Solnit have been putting together and watching all the things come together from all these art builds in California is absolutely inspiring and so I hope all of you do an art build and do something beautiful and then to push it on social media we all know that's important and we get lax in it but it really is important to use the digital storytelling because you reach an audience and you bring more people into your volunteer base when they see you know what a beautiful action you guys did they're gonna say gosh that's the organization I want to you know I want to volunteer with so and if anybody has any questions they can always email me and I will point you in the right direction whether it's to Ingrid, Avery, Lindsay or Sanu and get you all taken care of so thank you guys very much for joining us tonight yeah and Avery shared all the cool hashtags so check those out in the chat and the tell your stories about why you rise yes we should definitely see especially with a month left make a little video just practice for your event this is actually a really good practice step for the big shebang is to make really awesome little you know make it a minute minute and a half two minutes just you know why we rise show some of your art tell about your event and then cross post it all over social media and send it out in emails too when you're inviting people to your action like why we're rising so yeah I was going to say Ingrid are you have anything else go for it yeah just one last big thing exactly what Avery was saying and a great time to do that will be tomorrow it's August 8th that's officially one month out from rise at 3 p.m eastern noon Pacific time we're going to have a huge social storm encouraging everyone to post their stories whatever rise content you want using hashtag rise for climate or hashtag why we rise again that's at 3 p.m eastern noon Pacific time well I would like to give a very big thank you to all of our trainers tonight everybody works really hard to put these presentations together to be able to share their inspiration and their vision and it means so much to us and to everybody I'm sure that joins these calls thank you for your dedication and being here and we will see you guys next week for another training so good night everybody thank you all good night thanks everybody