03.03.26 • INITIATIVE
The climate crisis demands a creative response but too often the people best positioned to deliver it are working in isolation.
You know the feeling. Maybe you're designing for impact, trying to move your clients toward better practices. Maybe you work in an agency and questioning the clients and projects your employer engages. Maybe you're the only one in a studio speaking up about ethics. Maybe you're a freelancer working alone, wondering if anyone else cares about the carbon cost of that website redesign.
Sustained change needs community. The kind you can't build through Slack channels or LinkedIn posts.
That's why we started CLIMATES.
The Gap We Saw
There are so many designers, founders, communicators, strategists, storytellers, and policy makers doing groundbreaking work in climate. Pushing sustainable practices and making conscious choices about the projects they take on and the clients they work with.
But we weren't connected. We were a scattered network of people who should know each other, could learn from each other, and needed to support each other, but had didn't have a regular way to meet. The climate-conscious creative community existed in theory but not in practice.
CLIMATES bridges that gap with a monthly mixer bringing Naarm/Melbourne's climate-conscious creative community together.
Why In-Person Matters
We spend enough time online. We've all joined the Slack workspaces, followed the right people on LinkedIn, bookmarked the newsletters. Digital connection has its place, but it can't replace the energy of being in a room with people who get it.
When you meet someone face-to-face who's wrestling with the same questions—how do I convince my clients sustainability matters? How do I transition my practice toward more regenerative work? How do I find collaborators who share these values?—something changes. You realise you're not alone. You exchange ideas that actually work. You find potential collaborators, referral partners, friends. You leave feeling energised instead of depleted.
That's what CLIMATES is designed to create.
Who it's For
Signatories to Design Declares Australia, Comms Declare, Clean Creatives, and anyone working at the intersection of creativity and climate.
Designers pushing sustainable practices in their studios. Strategists helping brands transition to regenerative models. Storytellers crafting hopeful climate narratives. Creatives exploring what climate-conscious work actually looks like in reality.
You might work at an agency, run your own studio, or freelance. You might be early in your career or decades deep. You might already be doing climate work full-time or just starting to shift your practice in that direction. You might be a founder building what's next. If you're using creativity as a tool for climate action (or want to) you belong here.
The format is intentionally low-key because we wanted to remove barriers. No boring presentations, panels, pitches. You don't need to be an expert. You just need to care about using your creative practice for climate action. Just show up and meet like-minded people. It's a social event, not a networking one.
What We're Building
CLIMATES is about building the movement we need to create the change we want to see.
The creative industry has enormous power to shape how people think, what they value, and how they act. We design the systems that drive consumption. We craft the narratives that justify or challenge the status quo. We create the experiences that normalise certain behaviours and make others feel impossible.
That power can accelerate the climate crisis or help solve it. The difference is intentionality. When climate-conscious creatives work in isolation that intentionality is harder to sustain. You're swimming against the current of business as usual. You're making the harder choice without seeing others do the same.
But when you're part of a community doing this work together, you have support. You have accountability. You have proof it's possible. You have people to call on when you need advice, collaborate with on ambitious projects, or just remind you why this all matters. Because it does.
That's the community we're building. One mixer at a time.
CLIMATES takes place on the unceded stolen lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin nation. We recognise their continuing connection to culture, land, waters and community, and pay respects to elders past and present. There cannot be climate justice without Indigenous justice. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.