Creative policy dialogues through serious fun: Humour and acrobatics to confront climate and mental Health

This report sets out the findings from one of four projects commissioned by Wellcome Policy Lab to pilot creative approaches to policy development. In this project, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre led an interdisciplinary team to evaluate different ways to harness humour and circus arts to help reshape policy dialogues relating to climate change and mental health.

The authors pursued unconventional uses of cartoons: visual depictions of analogy and metaphor that amusingly communicate complex concepts almost instantaneously. By lightly capturing absurdities, tensions and dangers pertaining to policy processes, they posited that humour could deepen engagement, reframe thinking, help notice difficult truths, build trust between people and inspire new ideas. The authors developed and deployed nine humour-based approaches, ranging from cartoon cocreation workshops to ‘pocket theatre’ vignettes that quickly and compellingly convey key issues and invite conversation.