Create Your Own Visual Collages

Collage created with a new theme, by the City of Cleveland Office of Sustainability, based on collages from the Chicago Community Climate Action Toolkit (

http://www.sustainablecleveland.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Collage-Comm-Engagement-Health-2013.pdf)

Why make your own collage?

Visual collages get people talking about climate action. They are a great way to identify what people are already doing related to climate action; what their families/communities have done in the past; and what they want to do—or don’t want to do—moving forward.

While you are welcome to use collages that are already created—the Visual Collages from the Chicago toolkit (also see a few examples at the end of this document); collages from Cleveland; or others you may find—your work will be more successful if you create your own collages, tailored to your region, communities, climate impacts, and local/regional climate plans. Place-based work is more successful, both in identifying assets to build on and interesting people in climate-related work. Visual collages are largely about helping people see themselves in the climate picture.

Consider creating collages that correspond to local climate action plans or community-based projects. Use the Work Plan Template for help finding local climate plans and strategies.

How to make your own collageTo make your own community-based climate action collage, just drop your own photos and text into the template on pages 4 & 5. Put photos on the first page, with very short captions. On the second page, write a more detailed description of each photo in the ‘Captions’ section. In the ‘Questions’ section, suggest some questions to start conversations. Check out sample collages at the end of this document.

A few tips:• stick with one theme for each collage

(for example, food, gardening, classrooms, or another theme from your local climate plan or community priorities)

• type in your own title, caption and questions– replacing the text enclosed by brackets in the template.

• use photos that reflect your region• be sure to include people in (many

of) the photos• resize the photos by dragging the

corners • use more or fewer photos than the

template, if you want; about a dozen photos usually works well

• number the photos in the caption and use the same numbers for the corresponding descriptions on the second page

• for more ideas, refer to the Visual Collages from the Chicago toolkit and take a look at more collages created by the City of Cleveland Office of Sustainability

• share your collage with C3I partners!

{type in a title based on a theme}Do these images remind you of anything that you do or have seen others do?

{type title from page one}

{type in brief descriptions of each photo shown on page one; be sure to include the number and caption from each photo}

• {type in questions that can inspire people to talk about things they do now or in the past}

• {type in questions that inspire people to talk about what they can do in the future}

{type your organization’s name here} created this visual collage in partnership with the Connecting Climate to Communities Initiative, based on a design from The Field Museum.

Captions Questions

Sample Collages from the Chicago Toolkit