Create Your Own Visual Collages Collage created with a new theme, by the City of Cleveland Office of Sustainability, based on collages from the Chicago Community Climate Action Toolkit ( Collage-Comm-Engagement-Health-2013.pdf) Collage-Comm-Engagement-Health-2013.pdf

Why make your own collage? Visual collages get people talking about climate action. They are a great way to identify what people are already doing related to climate action; what their families/communities have done in the past; and what they want to do—or don’t want to do—moving forward. While you are welcome to use collages that are already created—the Visual Collages from the Chicago toolkit (also see a few examples at the end of this document); collages from Cleveland; or others you may find—your work will be more successful if you create your own collages, tailored to your region, communities, climate impacts, and local/regional climate plans. Place-based work is more successful, both in identifying assets to build on and interesting people in climate- related work. Visual collages are largely about helping people see themselves in the climate picture. Visual Collages from the Chicago toolkitcollages from Cleveland Consider creating collages that correspond to local climate action plans or community-based projects. Use the Work Plan Template for help finding local climate plans and strategies.

How to make your own collage To make your own community-based climate action collage, just drop your own photos and text into the template on pages 4 & 5. Put photos on the first page, with very short captions. On the second page, write a more detailed description of each photo in the ‘Captions’ section. In the ‘Questions’ section, suggest some questions to start conversations. Check out sample collages at the end of this document. A few tips: stick with one theme for each collage (for example, food, gardening, classrooms, or another theme from your local climate plan or community priorities) type in your own title, caption and questions– replacing the text enclosed by brackets in the template. use photos that reflect your region be sure to include people in (many of) the photos resize the photos by dragging the corners use more or fewer photos than the template, if you want; about a dozen photos usually works well number the photos in the caption and use the same numbers for the corresponding descriptions on the second page for more ideas, refer to the Visual Collages from the Chicago toolkit and take a look at more collages created by the City of Cleveland Office of SustainabilityVisual Collages from the Chicago toolkitcollages created by the City of Cleveland Office of Sustainability share your collage with C3I partners!

{type in a title based on a theme} Do these images remind you of anything that you do or have seen others do?

{type title from page one} {type in brief descriptions of each photo shown on page one; be sure to include the number and caption from each photo} {type in questions that can inspire people to talk about things they do now or in the past} {type in questions that inspire people to talk about what they can do in the future} {type your organization’s name here} created this visual collage in partnership with the Connecting Climate to Communities Initiative, based on a design from The Field Museum. CaptionsQuestions

Sample Collages from the Chicago Toolkit