Climate Emergency Action Plans are highly complex, involving multiple actors from across sectors. The most immediate challenge, to enable collaboration both inside the local government and with external organisations, is to communicate the multiple lines of actions and operational objectives. This information is held in different parts of the organisations, and in documents with diverse format and languages. The Visual Action plan provides a solution to this issue. This key innovation enables the delivery of Climate Emergency Action Plans by identifying which internal and external stakeholders are already involved, as well as those that should be, but are not.

The Southwark Climate Emergency Visual Action Plan is now used by Southwark Council’s Climate Emergency department to continue with the iterative development of their action plan across the local authority. The innovation has been instrumental in identifying which of the 150 actions would be supported by UAL and has been employed to develop the brief for the UAL Climate Studio, supporting collaboration with external organisations around the development of the Sustainable Food Action Plan and leading to design-led public engagement informing local action plans. Southwark Council and Service Futures Lab will develop the Visual Action Plan into a digital service available to any local authority. The innovation facilitates communication of complex action plans that is required as a first step to enable collaboration with multiple stakeholders, which is widely recognised as a requisite to tackle complex challenges such as achieving net zero.

Public officers, policy researchers, design practitioners and design researchers collaborated to develop the innovation. Southwark Council’s Tom Taylor brought his deep understanding of local authority processes, whilst Alvaro Bravo Cole and Lara Salinas used their expertise to translate their understanding of these processes into visual diagrams.

The plan takes a people-centre approached, making the work of local authorities more accessible. The innovation has been used by Southwark Council to update their Action Plan and to develop a KE in-curricular activity involving 30 postgraduate design researchers, 4 local organisations and 100 local residents.

Southwark Council’s Climate Emergency Department found the tool increased awareness of their role in achieving net zero, helping plan actions and activities. It also improved their ability to communicate policy intent and actions with external organisations, local businesses and residents, increasing awareness of the Council’s ambition to become net zero by 2030 and enabling new collaborations.

Viewing the climate crisis as an opportunity to create a more just, inclusive and resilient place, the prototype that the team developed has been instrumental in identifying which of the 150 actions would be supported by UAL. It has enabled the adoption of design at a strategic level by Southwark Council, where the Climate Emergency department continue to use this innovation as part of the iterative development of their action plan. The initiative underpins the brief for UAL’s Climate Studio which forges close partnerships and supports local networks across London to co-create better places.

Climate Emergency Action Plans are highly complex, involving multiple actors from across sectors. The most immediate challenge, to enable collaboration both inside the local government and with external organisations, is to communicate the multiple lines of actions and operational objectives. This information is held in different parts of the organisations, and in documents with diverse format and languages. The Visual Action plan provides a solution to this issue. This key innovation enables the delivery of Climate Emergency Action Plans by identifying which internal and external stakeholders are already involved, as well as those that should be, but are not.

Working as a designer-in-government, Bravo Cole (UAL) joined the Climate Emergency team at Southwark Council for 3 months, reviewing and visualising all internal and external facing documents related to their strategic priorities and action plan. Together, the team coordinated and tracked 150 actions included in the Council’s original strategy. They then used the online visual platform, Miro, to iteratively develop a prototype that enabled Southwark Council to monitor and communicate progress against their actions.

Following the initial innovation, Southwark Council used the visualisation tool to 1) track progress and re-assess their original Climate Emergency Action Plan, 2) produce an updated, interactive and more accessible version of their original strategy, 3) identify strategic objectives that are better addressed through collaborative Knowledge Exchange partnerships. Southwark Council and Service Futures Lab will develop the Visual Action Plan into a digital service available to any local authority.

No organisation can achieve carbon neutrality on their own. The prototype used to create Southwark’s Climate Emergency Visual Action Plan informs ‘positive long-term behaviours’ as part of the UK’s Net Zero Carbon Emission objectives by communicating complex action plans and engaging multiple stakeholders to achieve a powerful people-centre approach to the climate emergency.