"Right now we are facing an unprecedented climate and extinction crisis. At risk is everything: all of us and all life on Earth. We are entering one of the most important decades in human history. The most creative, transformative decade humanity has ever seen, simply because it has to be." Dr Tessa Fleunce Australian Conservation Foundation The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) is adopting a hopeful solutions strategy to reach diverse new audiences and broaden their base. They believe that they can build awareness of the extinction crisis by starting with Australia's love of nature and engaging people with hopeful stories that avoid climate issue polarization. Through an Urban Nature Campaign they aim to attract conservative-leaning audiences, ultimately shifting the environmental agendas of major political parties and securing systemic reforms that are required to protect Australia's threatened environments. The Urban Nature Campaign aims to be high profile, inclusive, depolarising and inspiring. It will spark people's imaginations, demonstrate that more urban nature is possible and challenge audiences to re-access their relationships to nature.

Your role as a designer is to research, propose, speculate, disrupt and visualise the future. To push the boundaries and innovate new scenarios and possibilities. You will respond to the ACF's 2020 Nature Campaign Strategy and research the role urban nature can play in helping to solve the extinction/climate crisis. You will interrogate questions such as: Why is biodiversity important? How can we provide for our threatened species? How can a flourishing urban nature build community and enhance our health and well being? The research will underpin and drive campaign strategy, communication concepts and design interventions that contribute hopeful solutions to the climate and extinction crisis.

Students will be required to present group research and individual present communication design strategies, campaign concepts and prototypes. Finally, students will present an Urban Nature Campaign Proposal comprising a campaign strategy, campaign communications and speculative urban nature activation concepts to a panel, comprising academics and environmental activists.

Students will be briefed by ACF campaign staff and will be supported by guest speakers from the design industry in areas such as campaign strategy and creation direction. Students will document and share their personal connections with nature. They will work in groups to research the potential benefits of radically greening our neighbourhoods and how providing for urban nature to flourish in our cities could address issues such as threats to biodiversity, lack of community, isolation, obesity, loneliness and mental health issues. They will explore how urban nature can be part of the climate and extinction crisis solution. They will ask 'What does nature need?' and examine how a love of nature could motivate and mobilise more conservative people to take action on climate change issues. The design output aims to speculate the future, stimulate discussion and mobilise communities into local action.

There will be three assessment tasks. Project 1 — 20% Project 2 — 50% SKO 3 — 30%

Designers Can Help Save the Planet *City of Melbourne - nature in the City Strategy https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/SiteCollectionDocuments/nature-in-the-city-strategy.pdf Biodiversity and our brains: How ecology and mental health go together in our cities

Australian Conservation Foundation

Designing Experiences, Designing for Social Change, Designing Identity