Communicating Wildfire: Funder-Only Roundtable

As communities across the world face increasing impacts from wildfires, the ways in which funders and wildfire-focused organizations communicate about their work, fire, and impacts to communities matter immensely. From Smokey the Bear’s, “only you can prevent forest fires” to framing fire as a villain that we must “fight”, how we talk about fire shapes our understanding of both risk and resilience. We know that wildfire communications are essential to the resilience ecosystem, providing social and information infrastructure that influences how the public views fire and investments that aim to build fire-adapted communities.

Across two sessions and a funder-only roundtable, participants will hear from wildfire and communications leaders to better understand:

• What is narrative and framing? Why does it matter? What is narrative change?
• What are the dominant wildfire narratives and how do they influence the way the public views fire?
• How are organizations and funders leveraging storytelling and narratives in their work on wildfire?
• How do the ways in which journalists and local storytellers communicate about fire influence public perspectives and dominant narratives?

This final session will feature short “case studies” from foundation representatives who are supporting wildfire communications efforts as well as a lightly facilitated open conversation focused on opportunities and challenges of supporting wildfire communications work.  This session is open to both programmatic and foundation communications staff. Discussions will elevate both inside (foundation communications) and outside (grantmaking and partnership) strategies.

This session is open to current WRF Funder Members and those who are not current WRF Members.

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