Founder Feature: Joycelyn Longdon, Founder of climateincolour
Joycelyn is an environmental justice activist and academic. She is also the founder of ClimateInColour, an online education platform and community for the climate curious. The platform is a launchpad for critical conversations but also a space of hope a space to make climate conversations more accessible and diverse and transform how people learn about, communicate and act on climate issues. Discover her founder story below →
Q: What inspired ClimateinColour?
WHAT IS YOUR ROLE IN THE CLIMATE MOVEMENT? 🤷🏾♀️ A resource guide by Climate In Colour
JL: I was inspired to start ClimateInColour when I found out I had been accepted into my PhD programme. I had just wound up a previous social advocacy platform and creative studio, BlackOnBlack, that worked with BIPOC creatives. I was eager to continue the theme of design-led, community-centred advocacy and public communications, but this time, take all that I had learned to advocate for climate justice.
Q: What motivates you in your activism journey?
JL: I am motivated by my ancestors and all those who came before me. All those who faced bleaker, darker times and yet persisted. I am also motivated primarily by the activities and hobbies I do, and time spent not working on climate but with friends and family. Painting, walking, drinking, eating, playing board games, swimming or literally doing 'nothing'. These things bring me joy and peace and I want to live in a world where I can not only continue to do these things safely or at all but in which I can spend more time doing them than fighting for them!
Q:
What is your personal mantra?
“I've stolen my personal mantra from one of my favourite scholars Donella Meadows: "There is too much bad news to justify complacency. There is too much good news to justify despair".
— Joycelyn Longdon, Founder of Climate in Colour
Q: How have your lived experiences shaped your approach towards founding ClimateinColour?
JL: I think growing up as a Black woman in a primarily white area but with a strong Ghanaian heritage made me appreciate the inherently intertwined nature of justice with racial, cultural and gender justice from a young age. Growing up, because of racism and the allure of assimilation, I silenced myself a lot and exited as a fraction of my true self. I found this experience mirrored in the environmental movement.
At only 16, my first experience of attending an environmental march, a place I assumed I would finally 'fit in' was less than enjoyable and it put me off active environmental action for a long while. I decided to focus my efforts on racial justice advocacy, opting for spaces I could be myself, mainly through writing (for outlets like Gal-Dem, so gutted they have just shut down!), marching and working with BIPOC creatives. But little did I know that racial justice was bringing me straight back to environmentalism. I began learning a huge amount about the intersection of race and environmental breakdown and seeing that this space was truly for me. I didn't want others to feel the way I did growing up but also felt it essential that those who prescribe to a 'white-centred' environmentalism are challenged and exposed to the realities of the inextricable need for justice-centred environmentalism.
Q: From your perspective, how are climate education and intersectional feminism
intertwined?
JL: The Malala Fund estimated that the climate events of 2021 would have prevented at least 4 million girls from completing their education. I have a whole Twitter thread on the impacts of the climate crisis on women, definitely go read it first, but women don't just sit at the forefront of the impacts of the climate crisis but have unique perspectives and experiences that make them incredibly good climate leaders. From the frontlines of climate disasters to political arenas, we know that women facilitate the repair and sustenance of entire communities and provide more stringent and effective climate policies. In order to build capacity in this space and get more women in positions of leadership in all kinds of spaces, and out of vulnerable positions, education is essential.
Q: Do you feel that climate justice is connected to liberation for all? If so, how so?
JL: 100%! My thoughts on this are characterised perfectly by the legendary words from the Combahee River Collective Statement* published in the 70s which made clear that "if Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression" – the exact same thinking is needed when we talk about climate justice. We must look to embed justice within all facets of our climate and environmental actions and solutions, otherwise, we will all continue to suffer. We may be able to trick ourselves, with fancy technologies and 'greener' consumption, patting ourselves on our backs as we barricade ourselves in our protective armour of privilege, but the suffering will be insidious and ubiquitous because that safety would have been born at the expense of more vulnerable people and communities. *The Combahee River Collective were a badass group of Black lesbian socialist feminists.
Q: Are there any new launches or features happening we should look out for?
JL: We (me and my lovely team of 2) have recently launched the ClimateInColour Deep Dives newsletter subscription. For £3.50 p/m subscribers receive full access to bi-weekly, short educational articles that will transport you into a world of leading research, important climate concepts and climate justice solutions. I have also relaunched the ClimateInColour Reads group over on Patreon one of our most popular community offerings. Climate In Colour Reads is a safe and accessible space to gain access to the latest climate/environmental academic papers and learn in a community with other climate-curious individuals. Sign up and take part in a quarterly seminar led by Joycelyn, diving into the content of an academic paper that sheds light on new research or important concepts relating to climate/environmental justice and climate science.
Q: What does intersectional feminism mean to you?
JL: To me intersectional feminism means not just acknowledging, respecting and advocating for ALL women: women with disabilities, Trans women, Queer women, Black women, Indigenous women, Brown women etc but also accepting and celebrating the multitudes held within each and every woman regardless of their race or marginalisation. Each woman is a cosmos of thoughts, ideas, joys, passions and experiences that make them special, powerful and beautiful.
🎙 Listen back to our live conversation with Joycelyn Longdon with feminist founder Ky Polanco.
We discussed finding your place in the climate movement, how to practice care in between activism and day to day life and why our liberation is interconnected!
→ Watch the conversation here
Joycelyn is environmental justice activist and academic. Her research centres on the design of justice-led conservation technologies for monitoring biodiversity with local forest communities in Ghana. She is also the founder of ClimateInColour, an online education platform and community for the climate curious.
Since ClimateInColour’s inception in 2020, Joycelyn has collaborated with a wide range of organisations including Meta, Samsung, The Design Museum, and Greenpeace. Joycelyn has been invited to speak on topics of climate justice, climate colonialism, activism, creativity and systems change by The United Nations Geneva Dialogues, Channel 4, Cheltenham Science Festival, Oxford University, The National Lottery, The Design Council and The Wellcome Collection. She was also the climate columnist at award-winning media company Gal-Dem, a regular climate contributor on the Sky News daily climate show and 2022’s winner of the Emerging Designer London Design Medal.
To keep up with Joycelyn and her work, be sure to follow her on Instagram, Twitter, and support her on Patreon!
