The potential of place-based, historically-informed approaches to drive climate action has not yet been adequately interrogated. Recent scholarly work has focussed on climate communication and the role of arts and humanities-led storytelling in engaging people in climate narratives. Far less has been said about mobilising arts and creativity to build anticipatory climate action. Nor have archival material and pre-twentieth century histories of living with water and flood been widely utilised in this endeavour. This paper reflects on our experiences delivering the UKRI-funded Risky Cities programme and specifically, of developing and utilising a learning histories approach that folds together past, present and future in productive ways so as to learn from the past and the present and rethink the future. Risky Cities uses this approach to develop engagement tools at different scales, evaluating their impact throughout using participant interviews, reflective focus groups, and surveys. Analysing this data, we consistently find that using learning histories as the foundation of arts-led and creative community engagement makes big narratives about global climate change locally meaningful. Crucially, this drives cognitive shifts, behavioural change and anticipatory action for both participants and audiences. Thus, our learning histories approach is an important participatory tool for building climate action, empowerment and resilience.

基于地点、基于历史的方法推动气候行动的潜力尚未得到充分质疑。最近的学术工作重点关注气候传播以及艺术和人文主导的故事讲述在吸引人们参与气候叙事方面的作用。关于调动艺术和创造力来制定预期气候行动的说法却少之又少。档案材料和二十世纪前与水和洪水共存的历史也没有在这项工作中得到广泛利用。本文反思了我们实施 UKRI 资助的风险城市计划的经验，特别是开发和利用学习历史方法，以富有成效的方式将过去、现在和未来结合在一起，以便从过去和现在中学习并重新思考未来。风险城市使用这种方法开发不同规模的参与工具，通过参与者访谈、反思性焦点小组和调查来评估其影响。通过分析这些数据，我们一致发现，使用学习历史作为艺术主导和创意社区参与的基础，使得有关全球气候变化的大叙事在当地变得有意义。至关重要的是，这会推动参与者和观众的认知转变、行为改变和预期行动。因此，我们的学习历史方法是建立气候行动、赋权和复原力的重要参与工具。