Community members discuss climate adaptation options at the final workshop in December.[/caption] Our fall season of workshops wrapped up this past December. In total, over 500 people participated in workshops held in our four partner towns: Wells, Maine; Dover, New Hampshire; Barnstable, Massachusetts; and Cranston, Rhode Island. We are excited to have engaged so many people in community discussions about climate adaptation planning. Participants shared taking away different lessons from the workshops. In particular, the theme of bringing climate adaptation to the local level stood out. In the words of one participant, “I just wouldn’t have guessed that local folks could have as much an impact as really they can. I think it was something that the workshop brought out for me." Our next step is to make sense of what we learned, and there is a lot to think about and process. Along the way, we collected a large amount of data. We have before and after surveys from workshop attendees, in-depth follow-up interviews with over twenty percent of participants, as well as debrief notes from group discussion and simulation outcomes following our 30 workshops. Our research team is working our way through this data, looking for patterns, changes, and themes. The data can help us answer questions like: Are role-play simulations an effective public engagement tool for learning about climate adaptation? What do people in coastal communities think about climate change risk? What challenges and solutions do they see for their town? How do people think we should plan for adaptation and who should be involved? We’ll keep posting updates on our website and will release our findings via several papers in late spring. Also be sure to check out our latest website addition, the final version of each our town’s climate adaptation role-play games. You can follow this link to download and use a version in your community or classroom.

-Julie Curti