In a media and discourse environment where doomerism characterises the climate narrative, how can stories of progress break through? The IKEA Foundation is working on that.

Across the climate movement, solutions are gaining ground. Why aren’t these stories being heard?

At the IKEA Foundation, we have recently reviewed our strategy: what we fund, how we fund it and where we can add the most value. Three convictions emerged. We need to support systems change, not just individual projects. We need to put more power in the hands of the people closest to the challenge. And we need to take narrative seriously because stories shape what people believe is possible.

That last point goes against the grain in our sector. Philanthropy knows how to fund solutions. We are less comfortable helping to tell their story. Many of the organisations driving solutions do not have the budgets and resources required to attract media attention. They lack access to the big media platforms and influential journalists that shape the conversation, and they rarely have the time or the professional support to package what they have achieved into a story anyone outside their field will notice. So the story goes untold, and the imbalance in public understanding widens.

Seeing this challenge, we asked ourselves a simple question: beyond funding, what else can we do?

Our answer was The Shift, the IKEA Foundation’s first paid media campaign.

We asked our climate grantees: if you had half a page to reach the public, what would you want people to know about the climate solutions already under way? Then we brought in Greenhouse Communications, which led on campaign design and the strategic media placements that followed. The first phase reached readers through several UK national outlets and digital platforms, timed to London Climate Action Week.

The campaign’s name, The Shift, came from the partners themselves. In interview after interview that our research and storytelling partners, Solutions Insights Lab, conducted for this project, the idea kept recurring: change is already happening, we have momentum, and the public conversation has not caught up. The Shift is not a claim that everything is solved or that the solutions are moving fast enough. But it is a vital adjustment to the current climate discussion: if progress remains invisible, it becomes harder to build support for the changes we need.

Read the full article about climate solutions journalism by Jessica Anderen at Alliance Magazine.