The purpose of this project is to create a fast-paced interactive video about the tipping points for creative change – and true sustainability.

You will be able to watch it, download it, adapt it and present it to your own community or industry.

It will be a tool for change agents and curious people everywhere. The presentation will clearly explain the concepts you need to know to be literate in sustainability and climate change solutions.

This creative commons communications project aims to fast-track response to climate change and the other rapidly converging sustainability crises.

While humanity is seemingly stuck on an uncontrollable trajectory of destructive change, we will help people understand the ingredients of creative change, in the context of scientific reality, so we can move towards a sustainable, socially-just, safe-climate future.

We will leverage the reach, distribution and impact of the presentation through social networking and web distribution systems aimed at sharing.

While there are excellent presentations available that explain climate change to the broader community, there is no equivalent communications tools that clearly explains climate change in the context of sustainability, or explores the tools, mindsets and understandings that are necessary to create change towards sustainability.

Target Audience

There are two target audiences: the presenter audience who will actively use the presentation by presenting it themselves and perhaps adapting it to their needs; and the broader audience who will only view the presentation, either online, or live at an event with someone from the presenter group.

The presenter group are people who already have either a clear understanding, or an intuitive sense, that business as usual is not an option and fundamental changes need to be made across society if we are to meet the multiple challenges ahead. The presentation will give the aware and educated people in this audience spectrum another tool to influence others, one with production values they could not organise by themselves.

And we will seek to engage the broader audience of people who know intuitively that changing their light bulbs is not enough, but are unable to see a clear path forward because they do not adequately understand how our human systems are disconnected from the natural laws and processes that allow life to persist. We will also engage those (many) people on the edge of realisation or change who just need a little push, a few extra links of understanding in order to join the journey. The presentation will not create the path for them, but it will give them maps and compasses to help them understand how to create their own paths, in ways that are responsive to the country around.

The presentation will be persuasive, but will not spend large amounts of time debating “sceptic” arguments or otherwise focusing on the very slow-acting segments of society. As such, it aims to leverage the actions and impact of the influencers who are moving towards creative change.

Project Origins

Two Australian Climate Project presenters, John Rainbird and Kathryn McCallum, simultaneously came up with the same idea at the end of 2008 – to create a collaborative presentation that was freely available to all, focused on the deeper causes of our current sustainability dilemmas and the changes required. Both were inspired by the power of Al Gore’s slide show as a mass awareness raising tool, by Gore’s challenge to find a sense of “generational mission,” and by frequent requests from the audience for “a copy of the slides.”

The Climate and Sustainability Crisis Demands Leverage

Leverage can be applied through finance, celebrity status, media or political power, but these things are not always accessible. The climate and sustainability crisis calls for us to leverage our work towards change in every possible way. Ideas for change clearly need to be scaled up in size and speed, and distributed rapidly. This project aims to assist this process in five ways:

* To use digital collaboration tools (email, wikis, collaborative presentation authoring interfaces) to leverage the knowledge of skilled thinkers in helping to create the content.
* To use digital distribution tools (social networking, slide-sharing, emailing) to leverage the reach and impact of the presentation.
* To promote conceptual tools which clarify the underpinning causes of our current dilemma to provide people with a more sophisticated understanding on how to drive change. (Specifically, through applying Donella Meadows’ framework described in her article “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System” in order to maximize potential for shifting mindsets.)
* To leverage volunteer power, helping more people become catalysts for change in a way that does not burn out individuals or require huge organisational support.
* By setting our information free, we leverage the energy and knowledge of a wider community of others by allowing them to improve or adapt it.

In creating the Hero Generation slideshow presentation, we are guided by a few aspirations:

Focus on Creating Change
We accept the principle that in order to go somewhere, you first need to understand where you are, and then imagine where you would like to be. Real solutions need to be based upon a real understanding of the problem. Climate change is not just about excess greenhouse gases – it’s about the mindsets that promote growth and quick fixes over sustainability.

When we learn to address the fundamental causes of the current crises, we will find the capacity to deliver real solutions to them. The presentation will focus on understanding => context => action => change. It will take off from where “An Inconvenient Truth” stops by focusing on solutions (without being dogmatic about what they are.)

Use Outstanding Production Values
The presentation will create maximum impact by using top class graphic design, imagery, animation (and audio production for the narrated version), conveying the science using the best of communications methodology and psychology.

Provide Full Transparency
As a collaborative project we feel it is important that it is itself conducted with the principles we would like to see enshrined more broadly in society. We aim to demonstrate openness and broad collaboration that will deliver a stronger product than if we just developed the entire product ourselves.

Provide Free and Easy Open Access
The presentation will be free to all to view, download, present, edit, promote, add value to, innovate with and build communities, events or businesses around. Inspired by the collaborative model provided by open source software design, we encourage anyone to innovate using the presentation materials. The only limitation to this is that, while events featuring the presentation may be charged for, the presentation itself must not be sold or resold and all changes or contributions of original intellectual property should be made available for others to build upon and share via the Slideshare.net website or other suitable sharing platform.

Under the Creative Commons copyright system this is known as an Attribution Share Alike license, defined thus: “This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license.”

Apply Scientific Rigour
As An Inconvenient Truth does so well, HG will present the science in clear understandable formats, and as Einstein said “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Scientific information will come from credible sources and the “official release” presentations will pass through the peer review of our Advisory Panel. User mash-ups of the presentation will be encouraged to conform to our sustainability principles, but will not be guaranteed for accuracy by HG.

Engage with the Emotional Journey to Sustainability
Our presentation will make use of metaphor, symbolism and examples to assist people in their emotional journey through change. It will draw on the narrative framework that springs from mythologist Joseph Campbell’s work on “The Hero’s Journey,” where he explores how all human cultures have central, crucial, recurring myths which tell essentially the same story – the journey of a hero, who begins unprepared and inadequate, and through a separation from the “ordinary” world, a series of trials and help from special mentors, finds a way to rise, change and transcend previous limitations to meet the challenge and heal the social fabric. The presentation will tell this endlessly repeated story in new ways, seeking to transcend apathy and despair by tapping into this narrative structure that holds archetypal motivating power.

Guiding Sustainability Principles

Based on the work of The Natural Step, the following principles and definition of sustainability will guide our content, which, in a nutshell, are:

We take only what nature can replace (in similar timeframes);
We make only what nature can process;
We avoid breaking nature;
We are equitable