The Climate Hub

Creating a welcoming and collaborative space to engage, educate, and empower the community to respond to the climate crisis. The Climate Hub will:

ORGANISE and host activities and exhibitions to engage people of as many different backgrounds as possible, with events, workshops, talks, people’s assemblies, climate cafes, and drop in sessions.

PROVIDE a range of trustworthy, evidence-based knowledge and accessible resources that can support people and organisations to develop their understanding of the issues.

CREATE and share opportunities to take meaningful action to address the climate crisis, from reducing emissions and energy use, to transitioning to a circular economy.

The Climate Hub will amplify the collective efforts of the people and organisations of Plymouth to transition to Net Zero by 2030 by gathering and signposting projects already underway, increasing collaboration and reducing duplication, and raising the background levels of awareness, understanding, hope and aspiration.

The climate crisis is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced, and the science tells us that even if the commitments made at COP26 are all met on time, the planet is facing catastrophic warming of 2.4°C, rendering areas of the planet inhospitable to human civilisation, flooding entire island nations, and all but wiping out entire ecosystems such as coral reefs. As such, the environmental focus during the pilot will be the climate crisis and the need to reduce emissions to zero or as close as possible to zero.

Over the course of the 6 month pilot, the Hub will collaborate with dozens of partners from different sectors across the city to engage, educate and empower people and organisations to respond to the climate crisis.

Via a mix of permanent and rotating displays and exhibitions (including literature to take away and signposting to other groups and organisations) and a packed calendar of events and workshops (aimed at explaining the urgency of the need to act now to drawdown our carbon emissions, and providing the practical skills and tools to do so) we hope to meaningfully support the city’s transition to Net Zero by 2030.

We will be able to report on the number of visitors, the number of event attendees, and the feedback from both groups. We will work with our partners to develop a reporting system that will allow us to estimate the climate reductions achieved by actions (or pledges to action) taken by visitors and participants.

We aim to demonstrate not just the efficacy of such a Hub but also the financial sustainability, so that we can establish the Hub as a permanent fixture in much the same way as a library or town hall might be: a practical and symbolic placing of our collective response to the climate crisis at the centre of our communities.

During the launch of a Crowdfunder under the name Our Planet Your Path it became clear that the idea of a climate emergency centre in Plymouth was what the community was really asking for. The Crowdfunder pivoted towards this and successfully hit its target of £75,000.

During the Crowdfunder the project gained a great deal of support from interested parties, from individuals to collectives, non-profits to SMEs, and educational institutions to many of the relevant council departments.

After the Crowdfunder we embarked on a program of partnership and network mapping, inviting ideas and expressions of interested from groups and organisations interested in collaborating on the project. We have selected a small number to represent the Collective, but we hope that The Climate Hub will be able to act as a Platform for future POP Collectives wishing to make use of the space, such as the recently launched Plymouth Book Collective.