Climate narrative change

Our Approach

Progress doesn’t always make headlines. The organizations doing the most consequential work on climate often struggle to make their stories heard: program insights stay locked in reports, disinformation spreads, and momentum builds in the field while rarely reaching the policymakers, investors, and publics who most need to see it.

Solutions Insights Lab partnered with the IKEA Foundation to help make that progress visible through The Shift campaign, which puts the spotlight on the people and ideas already moving the world toward a fossil-fuel-free future. Through 40 in-depth interviews with IKEA Foundation grantees and partners spanning multiple regions and approaches, SIL surfaced compelling narratives from the frontlines of climate action: what's working, what can be learned, and why it matters.

We shaped those conversations into placement-ready content for the IKEA Foundation’s first integrated communications campaign, in partnership with Greenhouse Communications, which led on campaign design and activation plus strategic media placements. As part of the cross-channel approach, the first phase of activity included partnerships with The Mirror, Guardian and the Financial Times — to coincide with London Climate Action Week in November 2026 — as well as digital advertising campaigns across Meta and LinkedIn.

What We Discovered

Across interviews with scientists, youth organizers, faith leaders, policy analysts, and movement strategists, we heard that climate progress is faster and more widespread than mainstream coverage suggests — and the gap between what's happening and what's being reported is itself a strategic challenge.

The most effective climate communicators are connecting global stakes to local, people-centered action. Youth movements are generating solutions, not just moral pressure. At convenings like COP30 and the Santa Marta Conference, South-South knowledge exchange, coalition-building, and political imagination are taking root and spreading. Transparency tools that expose fossil fuel lobbying are reshaping how corporate investors behave.

These insights shaped pieces published in conjunction with London Climate Action Week, designed to move beyond crisis framing and amplify the progress already underway.