Climate & Urban Systems Partnership: Community Partnerships for Climate Change Education

How to Use

This workbook can be consulted as a general reference for effective educational initiatives available for climate change education with city residents. It also showcases how informal science centers can structure their support to community partners in a manner that establishes community project ownership while activating best practices in informal science education, such as hands-on experiential learning, and builds community partners’ capacity for impact beyond the duration of funding. Anecdotes throughout the workbook highlight the added impact this type of mini-grant program made towards engaging new, diverse audiences that may not otherwise interact with science museum or climate change programming. 

Specifically, The Franklin Institute supported CUSP network partners with grant funds, connection to a large professional network comprising nearly 90 organizations, and workshops on best practices in climate change education and communication. While the large scale of the CUSP program and its network may not be feasible at all informal education venues, museum professionals working in the urban climate change education space will find many of these interventions easily replicable.