CORNWALL CLIMATE CARE

Can you help?

Forest fires, droughts, melting ice caps, floods, climate refugees… does the ever-worsening news about climate change leave you feeling overwhelmed and helpless?

It’s not surprising. Sadly, this hopelessness makes many people just switch off – at the very time when we need everybody to be on board!

The award-winning Cornwall's Climate Stories series of documentaries takes a fresh approach to the planetary climate and ecological emergency – by zooming in to focus on what is happening much more locally.

Our series of twelve 30-minute films showcases the inspirational projects and people working to find solutions and ways of adapting to the challenges we face. Our films are free to watch online and are also available for community and school screenings.

The aim of the documentaries is to build a sense of connection, local pride and to motivate individuals and communities to act – and the films have received praise from none other than Sir David Attenborough himself!

After watching our films, Sir David wrote to tell us: "The need you have identified is indeed a real one, and your films meet it very well. Many congratulations".

Practical, positive and inspiring

All the Cornwall’s Climate Stories films feature a wide range of fascinating and inspirational stories – from gleaners picking the ‘waste’ crops in our fields to volunteers monitoring changes to our waterways, projects to re-wet the vast carbon sinks of our peatlands, and a microbiologist keen to get us all eating low-carbon insects.

In viewer surveys, our films achieve an average score of 9.4 out of 10 from audiences, who particularly praise their balanced approach. The words most commonly used by viewers to describe how they feel after seeing our films are 'positive', 'inspired' and 'keen to learn more'.

Our films are freely available online, but their main purpose is to be used at public screenings, Q&As, festivals and industry events in Cornwall and beyond (after all - they're relevant well beyond the Cornish border!), where we hope they can act as a springboard for meaningful and non-judgmental conversations, engagement and action.

We are particularly keen to connect with less engaged audiences and people who may never have given a second thought to climate action.

We also work with Plymouth University to deliver school workshops full of creative activities around the themes of our films.

Why do we need this money?

We have already produced six films on a wide range of topics from the marine environment to fishing and farming. You can see all these films here.

There are still a further six to come in the series, and these will focus on the important topics of energy, housing, waste, transport, health and restoration of nature.

We are really working at breakneck speed (after all, we’re in a climate emergency!) and it takes around six months to produce our films – from the earliest stages of research, shooting the interviews and other content through to transcribing the interviews, scripting and then the highly labour-intensive process of editing the film.

Normally, films of this length and volume of content could take at least twice as long to complete.

We also need to pay for additional editing help, extra illustration footage, music rights or composition, colour grading and sound engineering.

And then we need to cover time and transport for organising and running screenings and outreach events to take the films out into the world and get those all-important climate conversations started.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and we are incredibly grateful for your amazing support!