Sustainable Storytelling- Climate Stripes
A weekly showcase of artists communicating about climate change
Climate has a communications problem. Art and storytelling are powerful climate solutions. This is designed to be an antidote for doom scrolling, brightening your inbox to provide climate education and hope to soothe climate anxiety.
This week, we’ll dive deeper into Climate Stripes - Ed Hawkins’s viral visualization of global temperature changes from 1850 to 2018. These stripes have become an iconic symbol in the climate community, inspiring many creative interpretations over the years.
Show Your Stripes
Climate Stripes are now one of the most recognizable forms of climate art. We can learn from their virality and adoption to serve as a model for creating more climate art in the world. There’s even an entire day dedicated to Show Your Stripes (June 21). Here are some of my favorite examples:
A knitted scarf with each row representing a year of temperature by Emma Garside.
The colors of climate stripes were projected on the White Cliffs of Dover in England.
A climate stripes friendship bracelet. Launshae used data local to Singapore for hers and shared an incredibly detailed tutorial with her google sheet calculations here.
New York Road Runners debuted NYRR Team for Climate with a climate stripes bib during the NY Marathon this year! It was so fun to spot these on marathon day.
Resources
If you want to see your own custom climate stripes based on your location, you can view them here
Climate Art 101 Student Spotlight
The capstone project for my Climate Art 101 Course is to create your own climate stripes. It’s amazing to see what my students have made!
The next cohort of Climate Art 101 starts January 20 and the early-bird rate of 50% off ends tomorrow. If you want to learn how to use art as a tool to simplify topics in climate change and join an amazing community of creatives in climate, you can learn more here.
My Art
Climate Stripes are a big reason why I am an artist today. My first piece of art that went viral was the climate stripes Twitter header. Hundreds of people use this piece as their LinkedIn and Twitter headers.
I then turned it into a dress, which is now my work uniform for all conferences.
Resources
Download a free version of the LinkedIn header here.
View my collection of Climate Stripes products in the shop here.
Lessons Learned
The simplicity of the climate stripes is key to their success. It’s easily customized by location, replicated, and recognized. It’s something that people can wear, view, and learn from. When I wear my dress, I describe it as “party in the front, climate anxiety in the back” because it’s a pretty blue in the front and dark red from behind. I think the bright colors draw people in and then allow them to think deeper about what they are truly looking at.
Have you seen an interesting interpretation of climate stripes? Shoot me a note!