Sorgen is an futures thinking and empathy building ice-breaker tool for community engagement around climate action
Sorgen is an futures thinking and empathy building ice-breaker tool for community engagement around climate action
It can be used during workshops, meetings and other conversations between communities and wider stakeholders to get more people comfortable with thinking about climate futures in a more collaborative, imaginative and creative way
Sorgen is designed to bring everyone into the conversation, to let their worries be heard and to boost imaginative futures thinking in to inspire collective action
Sorgen has been adopted and used by Concern Worldwide and Connect the Dots, Ireland and was Commended in the IDI Graduate Awards
Co-created with Laurence MacDonald
Initially we started looking at climate futures of coastal communities at risk of displacement by rising sea levels
We found that there was little to no community involvement at a policy level resulting in an emotionally charged situation and leaving and empathy gap between stakeholders and the communities
It was also clear that fear and worry were acting as barriers to imagination, conversation and action
Sorgen is a tool to hear and explore those worries in order to build empathy and move forward from them in an accessible and productive way
To increase accessibility there are a number of different ways to play
Have a look at our open source printable and online versions of the game and our detailed facilitator guide here
It was really important for us to design with rather than for the community
We held a number of co co-creation and testing sessions with the community
We made sure to try and reach as much of our community as possible and gave everyone equal opportunity to take part, hosting in-person, online and guerrilla style co-creation sessions
Sorgen has been expanded for a project I completed with Concern Worldwide on behalf of Connect the Dots Ireland as part of Cop On! The Festival
The expansion included the original Sorgen game alongside other tools and activities to collectively examine the barriers to people taking climate action and how we might overcome them
The tools were used to facilitate the co-creation of a series of recommendations on the issue that were taken to COP 27 by Concern's Youth Climate Ambassador in 2022
