NASA Climate Communication Workshop
The Pollinator Effect: Small Wings, Big Stories, and the Art of Climate Communication
CSU Spur, Denver | September 16 from 9am-4pm
Bring your climate communication skills to life in this one-day pre-conference workshop at CSU Spur. Hosted by Team Climate Resilient Colorado, part of the Earth to Sky Partnership network, this workshop is designed to connect interpreters, educators, and communicators with NASA science, climate research, and effective communication strategies that help make complex topics relevant and meaningful for local communities.
While this workshop builds on concepts introduced in the Team Climate Resilient Colorado webinar series, all are welcome—whether or not you attended previous sessions. Together, we’ll revisit key ideas through a powerful Colorado story: how climate change is impacting pollinators, and use it as a lens to explore how to translate climate science into clear, engaging, and audience-specific messages.
Join us for interactive experiences in CSU Spur’s greenhouses and gardens, where pollinators and local ecosystems become living tools for practicing climate communication techniques grounded in current science and interpretation best practices.
Turn learning into action by developing your own implementation plan, tailored to your work, audiences, and the stories most visible in your community. You’ll also connect with peers to build a regional network for ongoing collaboration, support, and shared learning.
Leave with practical tools, new connections, a clear plan, and the confidence to use place-based stories, like pollinators, to make climate change relevant, engaging, and actionable for your audiences.
To help make this learning experience accessible to as many educators and interpreters as possible, the workshop is offered at a reduced cost of $35, which helps cover lunch and meeting space expenses. Be sure to add the workshop to your registration when signing up for the conference.
Previous Workshops Offered by Climate Resilient Colorado
Climate Science Communication Fundamentals – March 12 | 1:30–3:00 PM (Virtual)
Every place has a climate story. As part of Team Climate Resilient Colorado’s virtual webinar series, this session explores climate change communication best practices through the lens of Colorado’s changing hydrologic systems. Join regional leader Dr. Cheryl Manning of OrbWeaver Consulting and Dr. Imtiaz Rangwala of CIRES at University of Colorado Boulder to learn how to translate complex climate science into clear, compelling, place-based stories. Using water—snowpack, runoff timing, drought, and watershed health—as the climate story anchor, this workshop introduces foundational best practices in climate science communication, including framing, audience awareness, and message clarity. Participants will begin identifying how climate change connects to their own site’s natural features, communities, and lived experiences—because every place has a climate story waiting to be told.
From Pika to Pollinators: How Wildlife can Localize Climate Conversations – April 16 | 1:00–2:30 PM (Virtual)
Every place has a climate story and how we tell it matters. In this second installment of Team Climate Resilient Colorado’s webinar series, participants will explore climate communication best practices through the lens of wildlife impacts and audience psychology. Join regional leader Mary McCormac of Colorado Parks and Wildlife to examine how people process climate information, and how values, identity, emotion, and cognitive bias influence engagement. Grounded in a wildlife impact study, this session highlights strategies for designing programs and messages that foster connection rather than overwhelm. Through the story of wildlife and habitat change, participants will strengthen their ability to interpret climate change in ways that resonate with their audiences and reflect the unique ecological and human dimensions of their own places.
Climate Change Solutions & Community Resilience in High Alpine Ecosystems – August 13 | 1:00–2:30 PM (Virtual)
Every place has a climate story, including the high alpine landscapes that define much of Colorado’s identity. This final session in Team Climate Resilient Colorado’s webinar series focuses on solutions-oriented climate communication through the lens of community resilience in mountain ecosystems. Join regional leader Jewell Coleman of the Mountain Studies Institute to explore how high-elevation communities are responding to climate-driven shifts in snowpack, biodiversity, wildfire risk, and watershed health. Participants will learn best practices for communicating climate solutions, emphasizing hope, agency, collaboration, and adaptive action. Through the story of alpine ecosystems and community science, attendees will practice identifying and articulating the climate story embedded in their own landscapes, connecting science, people, and place in meaningful and motivating ways.