Climate Justice Strategy and Movement Building Retreat

30 Nov to 7 Dec 2019

Empowering the struggle for climate justice

This gathering brings together organisers and trainers from across the Climate Justice movement in Europe, to reflect, share, learn, strategise and empower their work.

At a time of growing movement power and signigficant shifts in public narrative, moments of reflection and analysis are crucial for the climate justice movement to make the most of the opportunities and to strategise to overcome new challenges. More than ever we need to be fighting to win and build a massive movement for climate justice.


Climate activists, representing the diverse ecology of the climate movement, from grassroots to progressive NGOs, will find the opportunity to strengthen transnational networks, share and develop strategic approaches and practices, troubleshoot problems, and build the power of our movement.

  • To help us grow effectively, we’ll ask: How do we do training and capacity building across the movement?
  • To help us to adapt and respond to a fast-changing context, we’ll ask: How does the climate justice movement learn and how can we improve that?
  • To help us strengthen cooperation, we’ll ask: How can we develop synergistic approaches to strategy across our diverse and transnational movement?
  • To help us maximise the power in our diversity, we’ll ask: How can different actors and groups within the movement ecology gain the most benefit from the wide range of strategic approaches that exist within a massive movement?
  • To extend and consolidate broad support, we’ll ask: What narratives and framing will enable us to build the massive movement we need?

Participants will bring their personal, organisational and network experience, skills and challenges to the joint inquiry. They should have substantial experience and commitment to climate activism, organising or training.

Ulex will provide a facilitated framework for the sharing, strategizing and inquiry – as well as sharing our own work and frameworks for movement strategy and capacity building.

Public Interest Research Centre will share the learning from their 12-month Framing Climate Justice project – aimed at building the narratives our movement needs.

Already signed up are key organisations and networks from Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Turkey, and UK.

In advance of the training, participants will be asked to complete a survey on skills and experience they wish to share, key challenges for the movement, and opportunities for transnational strategizing.

Suggested Contribution
In the solidarity economy: Invitation only
(see the details of our approach to Solidarity Economics for details)

The Team

Our Name

Ulex: Latin (argelaga Catalan, gorse English) noun:

1. A thorny-evergreen flowering shrub, with a high capacity for regeneration and resilience. Its seedpods open in contact with fire and it reshoots from charred stumps. A successionary plant that grows well under challenging conditions. It improves soil fertility through nitrogen fixing, preparing the way for renewed biodiversity.

2. A traditional choice for igniting fires. Burns hot and bright.

3. A networked project adding nutrition and fertility to European social movements through training and capacity building. It kindles the realisation of social justice, ecological intelligence, and cognitive vitality.