The Climate Justice Field School, held in the summer and fall of 2023 in Vancouver, brought together a collective of 25 people to explore shared approaches to implementations of the community-written Climate Justice Charter.

The group consisted of City of Vancouver staff and community members, including planners, policy-makers, artists, community organizers, sustainability practitioners, activists, designers and scholars. As a group, we were experimenting and learning our way into doing climate work differently, deepening our understanding of what power-sharing looks like with communities most impacted by climate change and climate-related decisions.

Over 20 sessions, we hosted walks, site visits, immersive learning experiences, and co-design workshops at various outdoor sites, Emily Carr University, and community meeting spaces. In between these sessions, field school members were encouraged to participate in self-paced learning activities and reflections.

Materials from the field school are gathered up in Sharing Power – Codifications and Collective Learnings from Vancouver’s Climate Justice Field School and also presented in this article:

Cole, L., Kozak, L. Shifting and sharing power in urban climate justice work: experiments in transformative learning in Vancouver, Canada. npj Clim. Action 3, 118 (2024). 

Core hosting group: Lindsay Cole, Laura Kozak, Lily Raphael and Skylar Sage; funded by Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance and Mitacs.