Subscribe to Solarpunk Magazine‘s
free blog today!
What is a Solarpunk Story Circle?
Storytelling has always been at the heart of justice movements and campaigns for positive change. Stories carry memory, vision, and identity. They help us imagine what’s possible, connect us across differences, and move us to take action for a better world.
Story Circles are Solarpunk Magazine’s model for bringing hopeful storytelling to the center of community organizing. Solarpunk Story Circles are more than literary gatherings—they’re organizing containers where readers become storytellers, imagination becomes resistance, and collective vision becomes concrete action and grassroots climate journalism.
Why Start a Solarpunk Story Circle?
Solarpunk Story Circles are the community organizing core of Solarpunk Magazine, as both a publication and an organization. Story Circles are living spaces where local, grassroots climate journalism and storytelling fuel community organizing and collective power. In each circle, participants share lived experience, envision just and sustainable futures, and connect those visions to real-world struggles for climate and social justice.
By gathering regularly—in person or online—Story Circles transform:
Readers and writers into organizers
Isolation into relationships
Imagination into collective &
grassroots climate journalism
Solarpunk Story Circles create spaces where those most impacted by climate change and systemic injustice can shape narratives, build solidarity, and take concrete steps toward transformation. Every Story Circle is both a place of belonging and a base-building engine, nurturing new leaders and linking creative expression to real campaigns for change.
Click here to sign up and start or join a Solarpunk Story Circle near you.
While each Story Circle will take on a unique character, interests, and focus drawn from the lived experiences and creativity of its members, all Story Circles share common core values that include:
Collective Power
Stories gain strength when shared in community connected to action.
Leadership Development
Rotating meeting facilitation and shared ownership nurture new leaders.
Accountability to Community
Circles are grounded in frontline community leadership.
Imagination as Resistance
Creative storytelling is a radical tool to envision liberation.
Equity & Accessibility
Circles are inclusive spaces attentive to disability justice, cultural difference, and economic access.
Transformation
We hold space for grief and hope, and we recognize both as valuable catalysts for systemic change.
Grassroots Climate Journalism
Community members document and share local climate realities, policies, protests, and direct actions, amplifying front-line voices and connecting lived experience to the broader movement for justice.
How to Start a Solarpunk Story Circle
Click here to sign up and start or join a Solarpunk Story Circle near you.
Grassroots Climate Journalism in Story Circles
Purpose
Citizen journalism empowers everyday people—especially those in frontline communities—to document climate impacts, local solutions, and grassroots resistance. By weaving this into Story Circles, we create a powerful loop:
Community Stories → Collective Publication → Broader Movement Impact
How It Works
- Story Circles as Local Newsrooms
Each circle functions as a micro-newsroom, where members identify climate justice stories in their community. Meetings can include time to brainstorm local issues worth documenting:
local polluters, extreme weather, housing impacts, environmental racism, and grassroots victories - Training & Resources Provided by Solarpunk Magazine
A Solarpunk Story Circle Toolkit with guidance on:- starting a Solarpunk Story Circle,
- organizing and facilitating group meetings,
- building relationships with other local organizations,
- interviewing community members ethically,
- writing short reports, photo essays, or audio stories,
- research, fact-checking, and source reliability,
- safety, consent, and trauma-informed reporting, plus
- sample meeting agendas, story outlines, articles, templates, interview questions, and more.
- Optional online training workshops hosted by Solarpunk Magazine.
- Story Circles Produce Local Climate Journalism
- Short articles, photo essays, videos, audio reports, photography, and art created by circles.
- Submissions published on Solarpunk Magazine’s “Community Reporting” webpage
- Stories shared with grassroots campaigns and coalitions for visibility.
- Editorial Support from Solarpunk Magazine
- Solarpunk Magazine provides training on development and line editing for journalistic articles.
- Solarpunk Magazine‘s editorial staff curate, proofread, and publish selected stories, always crediting the Circle and author.
Optional Actions Beyond Journalism
While grassroots climate journalism is a core purpose, Story Circles can take other actions if they choose (mutual aid, campaign support, art, direct action, and other community organizing work around climate justice). The key is that storytelling remains the foundation—even mutual aid or protest actions can be documented and published as stories.
Click here to sign up and start or join a Solarpunk Story Circle near you.
Benefits for Circles
Skill-Building and Leadership Development: Members learn journalism, storytelling, media, meeting facilitation, coalition building, and other community organizing skills.
Visibility: Local struggles get amplified to regional, national, and global audiences.
Connection: Solarpunk Story Circles become nodes in a larger solarpunk movement as well as within larger grassroots climate justice information networks.
Empowerment: Participants see their lived experiences, writing, and art valued and shared widely.
Example: A Circle’s Grassroots Journalism Path
A Story Circle meets and members share stories about recent wildfires nearby, and the impacts they’ve experienced of breathing in smoke for days or weeks at a time. Deciding it would make a good piece of grassroots climate journalism, the group proceeds to:
- Interview neighbors about their experiences, health struggles, and coping strategies.
- Research known health effects and statistics related to wildfire smoke, similar stories in other communities, possible solutions, etc.
- Draft a 1,200-word piece; facilitator records audio clips.
- Submit the story to Solarpunk Magazine to be edited and published on our website or in the magazine.
- Distribute the story locally, while a regional environmental justice coalition the group has built a relationship with uses it in their advocacy.
Click here to sign up and start or join a Solarpunk Story Circle near you.
Follow us on social media
©2025 Solarpunk Magazine
Eugene, Oregon