Listening Circle

Climate Cafes offer a supportive space for people to express what they feel and think about climate issues, reflect together and listen to one another. The cafes are led by facilitators, so you can be sure there will be space for you to speak if you wish to. All welcome.

Upcoming dates

Saturday 11th October

Saturday 15th November

Saturday 13th December

3-4.30pm for all cafés – doors open at 2.45pm

Venue: Mill Road Community Centre, 6 Hazell St, Cambridge,
CB1 2GN. (Citibus 2, or 10 minute walk from station)

Cost: Free but donations welcome to cover costs

Please book in advance: http://www.eventbrite.com/o/104016587731

Cambridge Climate Therapists is a group of qualified therapists and psychological practitioners concerned with climate issues. We offer our time voluntarily to the community.

For more information, please visit http://www.cambridgeclimatetherapists.org

We are facing an ongoing struggle to comprehend the complex impacts of climate change on ourselves and the world. Some of us might turn to activism, some might feel like retreating into denial or despair, while others feel fearful and uncertain. We offer a safe space for people to share their concerns, their hopes, their fears in a series of 9 weekly sessions, starting in mid February 2025 (exact dates to be confirmed).

The group will be facilitated by two experienced therapists from Cambridge Climate Therapists, and the meetings will be held on Monday evenings at the Friends’ Meeting House, Handside Lane, Welwyn Garden City AL8 6SP.

To find out more, or to register your interest, please contact:

Jacqui Davis jacquidavis99@gmail.com Tel: 07831 682185

Isobel Urquhart isobelurquhart@btinternet.com

The Cambridge Climate Therapists with collaborators run monthly Climate Cafes at the Mill Road Community Centre

We think that Climate Cafes offer something different from the usual climate events. They are facilitated – so you can be sure that there will be space for you to speak if you wish to. The idea behind it is that talking about the feelings we have about Climate Change is important. A Climate Cafe is not a recruitment event and neither will it be focused on actions. It’s a safe feeling and thinking space.

They are facilitated by Daniela Fernandez Catherall and Sue Lewis, members of Cambridge Climate Therapists. To book a place please use the links below:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/climate-cafe-cambridge-tickets-816445449317?utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/climate-cafe-cambridge-tickets-816449471347?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl

We are running a new “Living with the Climate Crisis” group in Cambridge in APRIL 2024. The group will meet for 2 hours every week for 10 weeks and will provide a space for us to explore our feelings about the climate crisis and find a route to thoughtful action. Specific dates and venue are still to be confirmed and will be announced soon.

For more information go to Living with the Climate Crisis. 

If you are interested in participating or have any questions about this project, contact us on daniela@cambridgeclimatetherapists.org

We are working with Cambridge Carbon Footprint to support their Net Zero Now project which helps to train and support community climate leaders across South Cambridgeshire.

The programme is providing free training in effective carbon reduction strategies for local communities.

Daniela Fernandez-Catherall and Simon Lacey from Cambridge Climate Therapists are running a session on how we can achieve more sustainable activism by grounding our actions for climate in our values and life experiences.

Although no longer open to applicants, webinars from the course can be viewed on the Cambridge Carbon Footprint site.

For information on possible future courses you can email zcc@scambs.gov.uk

After a huge amount of effort and collaboration, we celebrated the launch of our new Living with the Climate Crisis project on Monday 17 April.

This project draws on the authors Rosemary Randall, Rebecca Nestor, Daniela Fernandez-Catherall and Andy Brown’s years of experience working to support people and communities as they confront the reality of the climate crisis.

The resources are freely available for anyone who is interested in running groups to support others in their communities respond to the climate crisis.

They focus on:

• support and understanding
• communication
• finding pathways to carbon reduction and community and political action

Living with the climate crisis groups will provide a space for people to talk, to share, to express what they feel and to reflect. They offer tools, ideas and skills. They emphasise our shared humanity, our interdependence and the need for a collective response. They are rooted in psychological understandings of our distress, of our difficulties in communication and of each person’s need to find a place in a bewildering array of possibilities for action.

The project is run by the Climate Psychology Alliance on a dedicated website, https://livingwiththeclimatecrisis.org, where you can view, read and download the new materials free.

Living with the Climate Crisis

Climate Listening Bench

Climate Listening Bench – offers people an informal opportunity to sit down and talk to our climate listeners. Contact us if you would like us to bring the Listening Bench to an event you are holding. From time to time we also set the Listening Bench up in venues around the city, most often in New Square. Dates appear on the Home Page and on the Events Page

What now, what next?

This is a group for people who wish to meet with others to explore and reflect on their personal experience and feelings about the climate and biodiversity crises. Details of the next group will appear on the Home Page and on the Events Page.

We took our Listening Bench to Wolfson College on Monday 18th October as part of their Green Week/COP26 event.

Our Climate Listening Bench project, inspired by the Zimbabwean Friendship Bench initiative, offers a friendly empathic ear to anyone worried or upset about the climate crisis. Over the summer you may have seen a couple of our trained psychotherapists sitting on a bench at different open green spaces in Cambridge.  During Green Week, the Listening Bench was made available at various times at a suitable site within Wolfson College.

And on Friday 22nd October from 10.30 to 12.30, Ro Randall and Daniela Fernandez Catherall offered a workshop, “Coping with the Climate Crisis”, in the large seminar room at Wolfson College.