Creative Power
An invitation to reimagine the relationship between culture, community energy and climate participation
Developed with Regen and partners across the culture and community energy sectors.
Overview
Why This Work Matters
The vision
Creative Power is an evolving initiative exploring how artists, cultural practitioners and community energy organisations might work together to strengthen participation, imagination and collective agency during a time of climate and energy transition.
Originally developed with Regen as a large-scale national programme proposal, the project brought together ideas, partnerships and approaches designed to connect creative practice with community-led climate and energy action.
At its heart, Creative Power asks:
“What might become possible if artists, communities and energy practitioners worked together to shape more participatory, imaginative and locally rooted responses to climate transition?”
The initiative is grounded in a belief that the energy transition is not only technological or political, but also cultural, emotional and relational.
Across the UK, community energy organisations are helping develop fairer and more locally rooted energy futures. At the same time, many artists and cultural practitioners are searching for meaningful ways to respond to ecological crisis, social fragmentation and climate anxiety.
Yet these worlds rarely have the time, resources or structures needed to work together deeply.
Creative Power was developed as an invitation to bridge those spaces.
The project hopes to explore how creative practice might help communities:
engage more meaningfully with climate and energy transition
develop stronger local participation and agency
build connection through collective creativity
explore climate action in accessible and imaginative ways
create new forms of dialogue and collaboration
imagine more just, connected and life-centred futures
Many ways in
The development process
An invitation to collaborate
Reflections
Get in touch
The programme vision proposes bringing together cultural practitioners and community energy organisations through shared learning, creative collaboration and place-based participation projects.
Participants would be supported through learning cohorts, workshops, residential gatherings and collaborative development processes before co-creating local public engagement projects rooted in their own communities.
The programme aims to support:
cross-sector collaboration between artists and community energy practitioners
participatory climate engagement projects
creative approaches to local energy transition
peer learning and mentoring
community-led cultural participation
public imagination and dialogue
shared learning across regions and communities
Rather than positioning creativity as an “add-on” to climate communication, Creative Power seeks to place culture, participation and imagination at the centre of transition work.
A key principle within the project so far is designing participation with “many ways in”.
People engage with climate and energy issues differently - through making, storytelling, conversation, practical action, emotion, humour, public gathering, creativity, place-based identity or shared experience.
The initiative in it’s current design explores how creative practice can help create multiple points of connection into climate participation, especially for people who may feel excluded, overwhelmed or disconnected from mainstream environmental conversations.
The intention is to create spaces where people could engage with difficult questions without losing joy, curiosity, beauty, care or collective possibility.
Creative Power emerged through an extended period of research, partnership development and cross-sector dialogue supported by Regen.
The initiative was shaped through conversations with community energy organisations, artists, cultural practitioners, participation specialists, climate organisations and potential delivery partners exploring the challenges and possibilities surrounding public engagement in climate and energy transition.
Key partners in the development process included: Regen | The Art and Energy Collective | Community Energy England | Climate Museum UK | Culture Declares Emergency | Flow Associates | FilmWrights.
The development process explored questions including:
How can creativity support deeper public participation in climate transition?
What might meaningful collaboration between artists and community energy organisations look like?
How do we create engagement approaches with “many ways in”?
What kinds of support structures help cross-sector collaboration thrive?
How might local cultural participation strengthen community agency and resilience?
The programme design evolved through collaborative workshops, strategic discussions, partnership development and iterative proposal design processes involving partners across both the cultural and energy sectors.
This process helped shape a vision grounded not only in theory, but in the practical realities, needs and aspirations of people working across these fields.
Although the original large-scale project ourlined above has not yet been funded, the vision and relationships developed through Creative Power remain active and deeply relevant.
I continue to believe there is enormous potential in building stronger relationships between cultural practice, community energy and local climate participation.
I’m interested in exploring how elements of this vision might still be realised through:
pilot programmes
regional partnerships
artist and community energy residencies
collaborative research
creative consultation projects
place-based participation initiatives
festivals and public engagement programmes
cross-sector learning spaces
smaller-scale prototypes and experimental collaborations
This page is therefore not simply documentation of a proposal, but an open invitation.
An invitation to organisations, artists, community energy groups, researchers, cultural institutions, local authorities and potential collaborators who are interested in exploring how creativity and participation might help shape more connected and imaginative responses to climate transition.
Creative Power continues to shape my thinking around creativity, participation and systems change.
The project emerged from a growing belief that climate transition requires more than technological solutions alone. It also requires spaces where people can build relationships, develop agency, participate in shared cultural life and imagine different ways of living together.
At a time when many people feel overwhelmed, disconnected or powerless, creative participation may have an important role to play in helping communities remain connected, engaged and capable of collective action.
I would love to hear from organisations, practitioners, funders, researchers and collaborators interested in exploring this work further.
If this vision resonates with you, please get in touch.