Today we are hosting the first Marine CoLAB workshop of 2016. We are a year in already to this two-year exploration in building connections to communicate the value of the ocean more effectively and so influence change. Looking back over last year’s work, brilliantly captured in words and pictures online by our facilitators FOAM, it’s clear the CoLAB has come quite a way in establishing a strong collaborative group with a sense of shared purpose and vision.

What is emerging is a network with ambitious goals aimed at amplifying values-based approaches to behavioural change and stronger connectedness between people and the ocean. The five minute film below was put together by the CoLAB members (of their own volition!) and eloquently expresses the value they’ve found so far in participating, what it means to have a little time to meet and think and explore new ways of doing things

Today’s session will be a mix of big picture strategy – finalizing the mission and exploring what it really means to have a ‘values-based’ approach – and the nitty gritty of developing and aligning specific programmes of work. Follow-up workshops in February and March will focus on how we might operationalize CoLAB beyond 2016.

Tomorrow FOAM and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation colleagues will meet to look back over 2015 in more detail, see what we have learned from a year of hosting the CoLAB, how we build on success, what we might have done differently, what we can adapt for other strands of work, and how we can measure the impact of this approach.

Visit the Valuing the Ocean webpage for more information.

Marine CoLABoration: The First Year from foam on Vimeo.