Countering climate anxiety with hope, clarity and inspiration: The RoundView is a toolkit for sustainability thinking and learning developed through research at the University of Manchester.

Manchester City of Literature has been working with the RoundView team to share how literature as an art form, coupled with the power of an understanding of the root causes of all environmental problems and their opposites, can help translate the UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals into clear actions for individuals and cities.

The RoundView gives a science-based set of guidelines to redesign our systems so we don’t cause environmental problems in the first place. It shifts the dial from overwhelm in face of climate and nature anxiety to hope, clarity and inspiration.

Poetry, developed by the RoundView team in collaboration with Creative Manchester poet John McAuliffe and Manchester’s Multilingual City Poets, forms a key part of the RoundView activities. Using poetry creatively together with visual art and science brings sustainability learning to life in a way that can be shared from primary school to postgraduates to policy makers.

RoundView co-founder, Dr Joanne Tippett says:

“Incorporating poetry has been a powerful way to create learning tools that guide people through learning about ideas of sustainability. The act of reading the poetry and puzzling out the hands-on games really engages people on an emotional level, helping them to see how we could relate to the natural world differently, offering a positive counterpoint to climate anxiety.”

An example of how the RoundView has made a difference is the Carbon Landscape, a £3.2 million National Lottery Heritage project to restore the landscape between the cities of Manchester and Liverpool that fuelled the Industrial Revolution. It was a key engagement tool for communities and project partners that helped lead to the declaration of the first post-industrial, urban National Nature Reserve in the coalfields of Wigan and Leigh.

“I found the RoundView process genuinely inspiring; it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless against the planet’s problems but I left feeling optimistic that change is possible for a positive future and I really loved hearing people’s passion and ideas.” – Participant, National Nature Reserve (The Flashes Of Wigan And Leigh, North West England)

The RoundView was featured in eight libraries across Greater Manchester in Manchester City of Literature’s 2024 Festival of Libraries. Library staff report that the RoundView learning resources really meet their needs, in particular providing a way to engage pupils with a positive way to think about future sustainability on school trips to the library. Staff noted that libraries are an early example of sustainability in action, and using libraries to loan hands-on learning resources to schools and community groups offers a way to reach huge numbers of people with efficient use of resources.

To-date the RoundView has reached over 135,000 people. A current British Academy Innovation Fellowship with UK National Commission for UNESCO is an opportunity to share this learning around the world.