To visualise our dreams we put them down on paper.
By Dorka Bauer, first published on 6 September 2019
The Climate-KIC Community Team has been working hard to develop new processes for the alumni community. We ran 2 experiments so far, one at Sziget Festival and #TalkingClimate. We are in the middle of exciting and challenging times. Of course, none of this would be running without some proper, long but fun meetings.
Last time the team met in Amsterdam, where they came up with high and low dreams. In other words, in the beginning of the meeting Emily, Esmee, Michelle and Dorka were asked to put down their biggest fears, and their craziest hopes, link it to some evidence and show how that would play out in the community. Why so? Because this practice helps to avoid the worst and work for the best. We thought that our high dreams are worth sharing with the whole alumni community so here it goes:
The community
“The community will be vibrant with a cool brand that attracts lots of people towards it. And as a result, at least 10 projects/experiments are running that are initiated by alumni and not the team. And there are even more in the pipeline e.g. starting up action, projects, events. We know this is possible because we have spoken to people and already know of 2 initiatives running. Posts on social media are blooming and we have at least 10 notifications on Slack everyday.”
“There are local activity hubs where there is a good integration between Climate KIC and the community. People are working, playing and creating locally — evidence is that there are lots of opportunities for people to get involved through Climate KIC deep demonstration projects.”
The community team
“The community team continues to grow. New people bring superhuman energy and together we move in a very exciting direction- we know this is possible because the team is already like this.”
Stepping out of our comfort zone
“The work moves beyond just the alumni and resonates with people because there is a sense of movement. The work is changing and it’s happening already, we are changing systems little by little. The community is sought out by outside organisations to work on their projects — we know this is possible because of our impact at Sziget Festival.”
“We can demonstrate to the outside world and parts of Climate KIC that it’s possible to have a vibrant community and prove to them that this way of working is possible. As a result, there are 100s of motivated and engaged actors and it’s possible because we’ve worked for it. And other people start jumping on the bandwagon because they see the sense of opportunity.”
The future of projects
“Projects that are already underway are taken one step further e.g. post talking climate. We are creating long-lasting processes that really get to people and help them make a difference in their own communities. It’s exciting to see how much energy people have when working together and what impacts they make.”
Annual Event
“There is an annual event that is action-packed, motivating and spawns more activity. We know it’s possible because we’re already working on it.”
