Building and Bridging the Knowledge Base

This chapter explores how the shared understandings and collective capacity to address climate change are nurtured and developed at the local scale, and in doing so help to transform the status quo. Key to this is embracing the diverse nature of stories and recognising the rich possibilities of what counts as knowledge. At a local scale this range of ways of “knowing” involves a spectrum of stories: informal, subjective accounts such as dialogue, personal experience, local knowledge, visual images, actions and activities; as well as the more formal, objective reports such as resource mapping and scientific research. Building and bridging the knowledge base involves engaging with diverse ways of knowing through a constellation of stories, experience and activities—the innovative activist practices and relationships that take root and flourish at the local scale.