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The climate crisis is often communicated through data. Carbon levels, temperature increases, emissions curves and scientific projections. This information is essential, but numbers alone rarely change behaviour. Facts inform us, yet they do not always move us.
At some point the conversation needs translation. Not from science into simplification, but from information into something people can feel, imagine and relate to. This is where creativity becomes relevant.
Creative disciplines operate in the space between knowledge and perception. Through images, films, narratives and visual communication, complex realities can become tangible. Climate change is not only an environmental challenge but also a cultural one. The way societies imagine the future, the stories they tell about responsibility, progress and collective action all influence how climate issues are understood.
Cinema has a particularly interesting role in this context. Few mediums shape collective imagination as strongly as film. A story can make distant realities present. It can transform abstract problems into something personal.
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to contribute to an event organised by Creatives for Climate in Amsterdam that explored this relationship between cinema, storytelling and climate awareness. The event took place at the Eye Filmmuseum and brought together filmmakers, activists and creatives working with climate narratives.
My contribution was the design of the event poster and its visual communication. Designing a poster may appear like a small gesture in the scale of climate action. Yet communication plays an important role in how ideas travel, attract attention and gather people around them.
The visual concept centred on a director’s chair surrounded by flowers. A quiet stage where stories can emerge and grow. The image suggests cinema not only as entertainment but as a space where new narratives about climate responsibility can be explored.
In climate communication there is often a delicate balance between urgency and overwhelm. Too much alarm can generate paralysis. Too little urgency can lead to indifference. Creative work often operates somewhere in between, opening a space where curiosity and reflection can take place.
Working on this project also raises a broader question about the role designers can play in moments of global change. Designers are not scientists and they are not policymakers, but design influences how information circulates through culture. Visual systems, campaigns, posters and identities shape what people notice and what stays in their memory.
Every design decision participates in a larger ecosystem of communication. The materials we choose, the projects we support and the stories we help amplify slowly shape cultural narratives.
The evening at the Eye Filmmuseum eventually brought together more than three hundred people. Filmmakers, activists and creatives shared their perspectives on how storytelling can influence the climate conversation. The atmosphere in the room suggested that conversations around climate are not only technical or political. They are also cultural.
Creativity alone will not solve the climate crisis. But without imagination it becomes difficult to picture alternatives to the systems that created it. Cultural change often begins with the ability to imagine something different.
In that sense, creativity becomes less about producing objects and more about opening possibilities. Images that provoke reflection. Narratives that create empathy. Stories that help people understand their place within a larger system.
Climate action ultimately requires technical innovation, political will and economic transformation. But it also requires a shift in the way societies imagine their relationship with the world around them.
And imagination has always been one of the territories of creativity.
