ITP Grant Partners Eve Mosher and Heidi Quante collaborated on HighWaterLine. HighWaterLine uses art and public performance to build community awareness around climate change.  Their newly developed Guide for Creative Community Engagement provides a roadmap for how you can use creativity to spur change in your local community.  Read more here. 

Invoking the Pause Advisory Committee member Lisa Micheli has been honored by Bay Nature Institute as the 2018 Environmental Education Local Hero. Read the announcement article here.

Dancing Earth Creations (2017 ITP Grant Partner) is so pleased to announce that our Founding Director and Choreographer, Rulan Tangen, has been selected for the Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow Recognition Award! » Read More

ITP Grant Partner, As You Sow - actions once again provide results.  A momentous decision by the giant brand.  Read more here.

As far back as 2008, The Redford Center understood the power of environmental messaging: that if we continued to put the same-old-same-old gloom and doom red-alerts into the world, people would start to tune out, feel hopeless, and disengage. Our intuition was proved correct when we hired a firm to research the clean energy field, and do a poll about how everyday people understand climate change and energy.

What we found was that most of us take light switches and electrical sockets for granted, and few of us know where, exactly, our energy comes from, or how much of it we use throughout each day, week, or year. We learned that we are consuming energy at an increasing rate, and the impacts of climate change are occurring faster than even the climate scientists predicted. We also learned that the majority of Americans believe that climate change is real, and is happening. At the same time, we learned that the very same majority of Americans does not believe that climate change is caused by human activities, nor that it will affect them personally. » Read More

Thanks to the critical grant we received from Invoking the Pause in 2017, The Redford Center was able to host a strategic retreat over Memorial Day weekend. In the beautiful, gothic setting of the Berkeley City Club, our staff, consultants, Board members, and industry experts met for two days of games, good food, and hard work.

The Redford Center is based in the Presidio, but our team is spread over a much larger region—needless to say, we don’t always have the opportunity to meet with each other in person. So, while the physical retreat was really just the beginning of our process to amplify our positive impact on climate solutions, it was also an invaluable opportunity for the team to be together, to deepen our relationships, and ultimately, to understand how dedicated, passionate, and focused we all are to achieving our common goal. » Read More

Young people, like their adult counterparts, are making strides in the environmental movement across the country. They organize their classmates, their parents, and their communities around issues they care about. But often, young people feel lost in trying to make change in a world that seems like they have little control over. Young people of course are essential in the environmental movement, as they are they are stakeholders in their own futures and should be able to act accordingly for a world they want to see.

This is what Earth Guardians, a youth centered organization seeks to do. » Read More

Building the capacity for relational engagement on climate change between scientists and communities. By Faith Kearns and Clare Gupta

Participants gathered at Mayacamas Ranch in northern California for an interdisciplinary pause. Photo by Susie Kocher.

It was a warm weekday night in the middle of our typically dry California summer as our group gathered around a fire ring at Mayacamas Ranch in Sonoma County to talk about relationship-centered approaches to climate change. We couldn’t have known then what we do now – that this beautiful ranch would suffer devastating damage in the wildfires that are still burning through this beloved part of the world. It now feels like a bit of a full circle moment – so much of the work that we are carrying out today was inspired by the collective grief around a large set of wildfires that happened in an adjacent California county just a decade ago. » Read More

If tech is going to be a force for social good, Silicon Valley must take a hard look at itself and course correct. In an era of both increasing social divisions and unexpected alliances, the tech community must grapple with its ethical identity. How it takes action in support of the communities it so often leaves on the sidelines (or pays below a living wage) will shape our cities, our country, and our humanity. » Read More