'Communicating Climate Assemblies: Enabling Pathways to Impact' makes a clear case to assembly organisers: communication should be treated as a core part of an assembly design and delivery, not as a secondary task.
If communication remains an afterthought, even a well-run assembly can struggle to be perceived as legitimate, generate public debate, secure political buy-in or resonate with the broader citizenry. In other words, to have impact. If it is planned early and sustained over time, communications can help an assembly become visible, credible, harder for decision-makers to ignore, and generate public debate. The practical implication is straightforward: communication should be built in from the start, with clear roles, sufficient time, and dedicated resources.
This KNOCA Guidance is a practical toolkit for designing a communication strategy, acknowledging that each climate assembly is unique and answers to its own set of context-based challenges. It follows the assembly’s lifecycle - before, during and after - through a series of 12 steps, helping communicators connect their objectives to the larger question of impact and translate them into a coherent strategy.
The Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies (KNOCA) aims to improve the commissioning, design, implementation and impact of climate assemblies, using evidence, knowledge exchange and dialogue. We are an active community of policy makers, practitioners, activists, researchers and other actors with experience and interest in climate assemblies who co-create activities and knowledge.
