Toward a Water Commons: Building a Policy + Cultural Platform for Hydroclimate Whiplash in Los Angeles

A concise research brief for the selected track, including:

* Key policy, scientific, and historical research
* Relevant LA/California policies, programs, agencies, and funding mechanisms
* Precedents, projects, and community initiatives
* Organizations, advocates, researchers, and practitioners already working in the area
* Key barriers, gaps, and potential policy leverage points
* Relevant arts, cultural, design, or social-practice precedents
* A short synthesis identifying promising opportunities for further development by Climate House

Research should prioritize existing scholarship, organizations, projects, and practitioners. Findings will contribute to the Toward a Water Commons policy platform and related artistic, curatorial, sonic, spatial, and civic work.

Organization Mission

Climate House is a creative think tank using the arts to illustrate actionable pathways forward—and bring them to life. Our Mythos Embodied Climate: Climate change is not the abstract, technical issue it’s often framed to be–but a universal, ambient one experienced through our bodies and daily lives. CH communicates using universal sensory language, to reintegrate our understanding of climate change as real in the felt sense, and as a core defining issue shaping everything around us. Universal Sensory Language: By speaking this universal language of the senses, we can communicate in a language everyone speaks and understands. This helps reframe climate as an everyone issue–providing an opportunity for the general public to reclaim their agency in understanding it and engaging with its solutions creatively, collaboratively, and meaningfully. Culture-First: Culture is the fabric of daily life. CH uses a broad suite of cultural tools to meet people where they are, designing programming that is audience-tailored and culture-first, recognizing this as the carrier oil for engaging with more complex topics. Show-not-tell: Because seeing is believing, we design programs that show, not tell. All of our programs are seared with a blueprint, grounding solutions on the experiential plane, allowing our audience to feel solutions that are so actionable, they can taste them.