Comedians, entrepreneurs, conductors, roofers or even influencers, they are active in the fight against climate change. For L’Express, students from the Institut Pratique du journalisme Paris Dauphine set out to meet small and large players in climate action in France.
1:40 p.m. Participants trickle into a collaborative workspace located in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. A training to become a facilitator of the workshops of La Fresque du Climat is organized there this Wednesday, May 24th. Célia supervises the session under the supervision of Antoine, “historic fresco artist of the association” as he presents himself, with a smile on his face. His presence is unusual. He is there because Célia is moving up a new level: from facilitator she becomes a trainer, for herself to train those who supervise the workshops.
The first comers settle down. “You can have a coffee or some peanuts”, offers Célia to Bastien, a young consultant. The atmosphere is relaxed. Everyone uses “tu. Everyone shares a common desire: to raise awareness of climate change.
2 p.m. The fifteen participants have arrived. The meeting begins. Right on time. At La Fresque du Climat, schedules matter. “We respect the timing here, because three hours is short”, explains Célia in a laughing tone. Because the aim of the association is ambitious: to popularize the causes and consequences of global warming by showing that everything is linked. Systemic. All this in three hours. Go.
Specific goals
The role of the fresco is not to train climate experts. Besides, the trainers themselves are not seasoned scientists who have studied the subject extensively. “The idea is to be able to make the mechanics of climate change understandable”, specifies Célia from the start of the session.
If the fresco is not animated by certified scientists, it is based on the IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. All the figures, infographics and phenomena explained during the workshops come from the organization’s reports.
Hence the motto “decipher, debate and trigger action”. The association intends to make the 3000 pages of the IPCC report accessible. A delicate but necessary exercise for Célia. “Inaction is linked to ignorance”, she justifies.
So to achieve this, an expert in climate change, Cédric Ringenbach, created the Fresque du Climat game in 2015. It consists of placing cards divided into five lots on a table. This makes it possible to better visualize the stages of global warming and the links between different climatic phenomena: for example, the melting of icebergs disrupts the water cycle, which itself plays on drought and affects terrestrial biodiversity.
Training accessible to all
2:45 p.m. Once the association’s project has been presented, Célia invites the participants to stand up around another table to replay the game of La Fresque du Climat. The main workshop that they will be able to facilitate once the training is finished.
Célia (in the center) discusses with the participants. She explains the cards of the Climate Fresco game.
© / L’Express/IPJ/Laureline Condat
“It is by frescoing that one becomes a frescoer.” As one of the association’s mottos points out, any citizen can train to animate and raise awareness of climate change. In the room, vsEach participant has a different job. All generations are present. With very varied levels of knowledge of the subject. But all are aware of the urgency.
“In the 80s, I was already voting green.” Carole never really clicked. She has always been sensitive to environmental issues. But it was only a few years ago that she really took up the subject. Today, she is taking part in the workshop to become an animator at the Fresque du Climat, full of hope to raise citizens’ awareness of the emergency. “After a fresco, you can’t remain completely indifferent, assures Carole, 54. This allows messages to be passed on.”
The story is different for Bastien and Célia. Both remember the precise moment when they became aware of what was at stake. For Célia, the first Climate Fresco was an electric shock. “Since I was a child, I have had these issues in mind. But having these 42 cards positioned in front of me and seeing that everything was linked gave me a big slap”, she confides. Since then, she has invested herself in animating frescoes and has climbed the ladder to become a trainer.
Bastien was seized by a video by Jean-Marc Jancovici. “I understood the consequences of global warming. All that it could imply.” A conference that marked him. The young human resources consultant is now looking to reorient himself professionally to exercise a profession in accordance with his ecological values.
A desire to grow
A huge success, the Climate Fresco exceeded one million people trained last April and is now translated into 46 languages. There are also 60 other frescoes. The principle is the same but the theme varies. There is the fresco of food, that of biodiversity or even that of digital technology.
The association has set itself a new objective: one million “fresco artists”. “It’s much more powerful to have a million trainers in the world than a million trained”, explains Antoine.
5 p.m. Celia finishes her presentation. Timing respected. The tone is set. The 15 participants are now facilitators. Time is precious. The climate emergency does not wait.