Who are Climate Visuals?

Climate Visuals is a project of Climate Outreach, a British Charity founded in 2004, “focusing exclusively on public engagement with climate change”.

Climate Visuals “aims to strategically change the working practices of influential visual communicators across the world, to catalyse a new – more compelling and diverse – visual language for climate change.” Currently, they are working on three major projects, and have recently launched their new image library.

New Image Library

In May 2021, the Climate Visuals image library went live. The website is powered by Capture Ltd, utilising their Digital Asset Management and Image Library software.

The library is a trusted source of content for over 650 climate change and environmental groups, accessed by over 15,000 people a month. Furthermore, this new, wider digital architecture will assist with Climate Visuals’ upcoming projects for 2021.

As well as providing the software, the Capture Professional Services team created a unique bundle of services to help the library get up and running. This involved uploading the content, keywording it to ensure its discoverability, organising it into collections, creating blog post pages, and migrating content over from their legacy site.

Nick Caw, CEO of Capture remarked:

“We are really proud to work with an organisation like Climate Outreach. What they stand for has always been important, but sadly in recent times, now more so than ever. Their upcoming projects, in which the image library plays a central digital role, to further the mission through visual means is an example of how powerful a communications tool imagery is, and we are glad to help facilitate that through our platform and services. Capture looks forward to continually support the efforts of Climate Outreach and the Climate Visuals project and strengthening our relationship.”

Once users register on the image library website, they can access the over 1000 images available. Images can be saved, downloaded, or added to lightboxes to share and collaborate with others on their selections.

What Content Can I Find?

The newly launched library holds a mix of premium Rights Managed imagery, as well as that available under Creative Commons licensing.

The collections span a range of aspects of climate change – from the causes, the impacts, and solutions, as well as that from specialist projects. The content portrays remarkable stories of the very real narratives of climate change, told through the power of imagery. These images further and illustrate the Seven Climate Visuals Principles, whose guidelines help users get the most from the content.

Looking Forward

The library continues to grow – there are plans to add over 600 images over the next 6 months, with new partners and contributors, to be a constantly evolving source of honest, accessible content for researchers, educators, journalists and those passionate about climate change.

Speaking of the project and the plans for the image library, Toby Smith, Senior Programme Lead, Visuals and Media from Climate Outreach notes:

“The Climate Visuals library is fantastic resource for our audiences and stakeholders across climate communications. We are midway through an ambitious year, including a project with TED Countdown, and it was absolutely critical for us to invest in our digital infrastructure. The system allows a small team to manage images and present our evidence to a huge audience base on a global stage. Now the platform is launched, its an integral part of our growth and features in our partnership proposals moving forwards as we have confidence in how to scale up our reach and impact.”

At present, the ‘Visualizing Climate Change: An Open Call for Photography’, project is running, where Climate Visuals is partnering with TED Countdown to collate a series of photos that document the reality of climate change around the world, encouraging entries from both professional and amateur photographers across the world.

Visit the image library today, to get started, and explore the Open Call for Photography.