On 23 October Climate Advocates from Scotland, Wales and England came together face to face as Team GB for the first time, to get to know each other and to begin consolidating project ideas. The workshop was facilitated by The British Council and Lead International. Over dinner David Viner, the British Council’s Programme Leader for Climate Change gave a fascinating speech in which he discussed some of his own experiences relating to the interaction between science and policy, and urged Advocates to consider the importance of climate change adaptation alongside climate change mitigation. David also set the work of Team GB towards a low carbon future in the context of the British Council's Climate Champions program.

GB Team Group photo

During the first full day of the workshop Advocates continued to develop group working skills as a team building exercise, and also to begin to brainstorm project ideas within country teams. Some Team GB Advocates had the opportunity to take part in a video conference with Team Slovakia, where they exchanged ideas and encouragement. After lunch the ideas of each group were consolidated, and four major groups formed: "Copenhagen 2009", "Advertising Low Carbon Communities", "Grow Your Own (vegetables)", and "Understanding Energy". The last day of the workshop there was intense discussion about the criteria that should be used to evaluate the different ideas and would subsequently be used to decide between projects. The group as a whole decided that the means of evaluation should be based on the probable positive impact, inclusivity to the target participants, be achievable within the allotted timeframe, be based on sound values and be original and innovative. While it was possible to decide the criteria on which each project would be judged, most felt that the four projects had not yet been thoroughly developed at that stage and therefore none could be evaluated thoroughly or ruled out. Nevertheless, the discussions about project criteria were instrumental in helping teams to apply rigorous standards to the development of individual project ideas. Each project group had a very limited amount of time to present an outline of their project to the other Advocates and receive useful feedback. Finally, the event concluded with some thoughts about how to take the project ideas forward and to strive to include those Advocates who couldn't attend the workshop at Birmingham. Everyone left the event not only feeling like they'd met some great people, but more importantly, they left with a clearer idea of how to turn their group ideas into tangible projects and they were also more determined to keep up the momentum needed to push forward their own project ideas to fruition. The most important objective was that the workshop should facilitate progress for the Low Carbon Futures Advocates so that they are to fulfil their aim of contributing to the mitigation of climate change more effectively. This was achieved through team building, mutual support between the Advocates and through fortifying project management skills at the same time as developing clearly beneficial projects to which the advocates can be strongly committed.