2019-23

Taking action

Joining the Extinction Rebellion (XR) in early 2019 changed my perspective profoundly.

Learning about intersectional work, regenerative cultures, decentral & holocratic environments as well as working with wonderful people across the globe I consider myself lucky to have experienced and facilitated non-violent direct action (NVDA) on so many levels.

Among other things I've done team coordination, copywriting, design, group and workshop facilitation, and occasionally street blockades. I was mostly moving between national working groups in Media & Messaging and movement-wide exchange circles though. Explore a few examples below!

2019-23

Taking action

Joining the Extinction Rebellion (XR) in early 2019 changed my perspective profoundly.
Learning about intersectional work, regenerative cultures, decentral & holocratic environments as well as working with wonderful people across the globe I consider myself lucky to have experienced and facilitated non-violent direct action (NVDA) on so many levels.

Among other things I've done team coordination, copywriting, design, group and workshop facilitation, and occasionally street blockades. I was mostly moving between national working groups in Media & Messaging and movement-wide exchange circles though. Explore a few examples below!

Facilitation

XR is a decentral movement with a holocratic structure. Local, working and project groups are independent. Following what is called a self organizing system, information and decisions flow through the movement: Anybody can kick off ideas or join anywhere. Keeping up with this vast network, channels and occasional chaos was a continous challenge.

Team Coordination

While the website working group was my home, the Media & Messaging (M&M) exchange was my connection to the wider movement. We strategized, structured, set up, networked, coordinated, facilitated, worked, reflected and regenerated together.

Analysis

We used Matomo instead of Google Analytics to keep an eye on page performance.

To recalibrate our strategies we did deep analysis of post performance and overall campaign milestones.

Website

On the web team I've done various things: Coordination, copywriting, design, some administration, organisation and onboardings. We were fortunate to have grown during the pandemic, so many of these tasks could be shared among 6+ wonderful people.

Rebel Experience (RX)

In early 2019 we did some groundwork creating a rebel journey and target groups together. For me, rebel experience connects not only to website visitors but also my teams.

Calls should be fun, everybody encouraged to find their place, able to bring in what they feel and the space open for ideas and honest reflection.

Design

We did a first design & content relaunch in 2022, go take a look! Here's some of our design exploration.

With few available recources, we adapted the Wagtail CMS with a few modules (columns, quotes, social share, teasers) for the relaunch.

Time for design unfortunately was a luxury to me since our campaigns require a lot of content and coordination work.

Design

We did a first design & content relaunch in 2022, go take a look! Here's some of our design exploration.

With few available recources, we adapted the Wagtail CMS with a few modules (columns, quotes, social share, teasers) for the relaunch.

Time for design unfortunately was a luxury to me since our campaigns require a lot of content and coordination work.

Content

When I joined the team there was a single landing page. Thanks to our developers and local groups the system later counted over 4.700 pages. The majority were handled by local groups and working groups independently – top level, documentation, landing and campaign pages was us though.

Content took up the majority of my time – pulling and coordinating information, creating assets like banners, icons and teasers, copywriting, structuring and cross-linking.

During action weeks we structured everything that is neccessary from legal to transport and trainings with our teams. I created demo maps on the fly, wrote daily reports until late in the night, chose photos from the press pool and supported event teams with setting up their programs.

Content

When I joined the team there was a single landing page. Thanks to our developers and local groups the system later counted over 4.700 pages. The majority were handled by local groups and working groups independently – top level, documentation, landing and campaign pages was us though.

Content took up the majority of my time – pulling and coordinating information, creating assets like banners, icons and teasers, copywriting, structuring and cross-linking.

During action weeks we structured everything that is neccessary from legal to transport and trainings with our teams. I created demo maps on the fly, wrote daily reports until late in the night, chose photos from the press pool and supported event teams with setting up their programs.

Graphics

The XR design system is clever at its core: Heavy letters sit on a colorful palette combined with woodprint illustrations. It balances punch and compassion well, is easy to adapt and remix.

I set up a design library in Figma to use with the German team and shared assets with the global community.

Graphics

The XR design system is clever at its core: Heavy letters sit on a colorful palette combined with woodprint illustrations. It balances punch and compassion well, is easy to adapt and remix.

I set up a design library in Figma to use with the German team and shared assets with the global community.

Sharepics

Our channels were hungry for content. Based on rebuilds of existing posts or poster campaigns made available by XR groups worldwide I set up a template library for social sharepics. And some are of my own creation.

The collection is available on the XR website.

Device & Zoom Backgrounds

Even before the pandemic, I've spent a lot of time in calls and started to adapt some designs as device backgrounds.

Beyond a creative distraction, custom backgrounds on our devices or in video conferences can serve as another communication medium and add to identification with the movement. The collection can be found here.

Posters

We were a bit short-handed during the August RiseUp campaign in 2021 so I stood in to create remixed posters used by XR for mobilisation.

Regenerative Cultures

Regenerative Cultures are a framework for care – caring for yourself, fellow humans and living beings, your community, the planet. It also aims at building resilience, something we understand as utterly important for the climate chaos waiting at our front door.

Here you can see a small example – when Lilek showed me this set of questions I had to put them into a workable medium. The set counts 144 cards and is available in German.

Digital products can embrace similar strategies, outlined for example by humane by design.