432 Habitat

Part of

Enrich

A NATURAL HABITAT FOR OUR SPIRITUAL WASTELAND

MA 2023

Keywords

Climate Anxiety, Sound Healing, Sustainable

Overview

In this project, we identified people's concerns about climate change, especially for the younger generation, who will have to live with the long-term effects of our present actions or inaction, which can be recognised as climate anxiety. It can create barriers to engage in climate action, as people feel overwhelmed with negativity and struggle to enact real change.

So 432 Habitat was created. A digital audio service with climate healing and real actions, which encourage Gen Z & Gen Alpha (who have to co-exist with climate anxiety for decades) to value and treat climate anxiety. Thus, helping people beyond paralysis and into action.

Collaboration

Accenture Song help organisations through a systematic approach to designing, launching and scaling new products, services and experiences that people love. They see the opportunity to create sustainable innovation is ‘Entertainment + Leisure’. And thereby tackle the planetary crisis through the things we enjoy. With the collaboration with Accenture Song, we were able to learn more about their previous works and insights on sustainable pleasure and climate anxiety through weekly meetings.

SECTION ONE SECTION TWO STATEMENT SECTION THREE SECTION FOUR

Background

Exploring the hidden danger of climate anxiety

Climate anxiety is a chronic fear of environmental doom. While other anxiety could be solved by avoiding personal unsatisfactory situations, climate anxiety is towards climate change which cannot be solved instantly and could worsen in the future.

Is it good or bad?

Climate anxiety is complex. For some, climate anxiety can create barriers to engage in climate action, as people feel overwhelmed with negativity and struggle to enact real change. The sense of personal insignificance can also hinder engagement in climate action, as we are constantly bombarded with the sheer size of global issues, and we doubt our individual ability to help in some way. Thus, they choose to give up and are even afraid of talking about it, which in turn exacerbates climate anxiety.

However, in a good way, it could raise the awareness of people toward the climate crisis and could also be the driver for active participation in environmental activism.

Research & Insights

We started with our observation and exploratory research to understand how will climate anxiety affect UK residents in their daily life and triggers for taking positive action.

In addition, we decided to carry out diversified research methods to obtain information and insights from different perspectives to figure out what are the key scenarios and interactions to change their behaviours and mindsets.

Key insights

Sustainable action should not be driven by negative emotions
Music therapy is an accessible, inexpensive and effective method of healing
Commuting time is a rare moment of solitude for many people, and when people put on their headphones, a natural healing room is created
People are more likely to talk and care about climate issues with like-minded people

How might we

enable audio as a therapeutic and inspiring response to help people beyond paralysis and into action?

Developing solutions

A digital audio service: 432 Habitat

Researchers discovered that 432 Hz music reduces acoustic fatigue and can be used to effectively reduce stress and anxiety in emergency nurses during a pandemic. This frequency not only has a positive effect on calming the nerves, but can also increase our excitement and concentration. The music tuned to 432 Hz is softer, brighter, offers more clarity, and is easier to hear.

Let's create an effective, relaxing, comfortable and powerful natural habitat for our spiritual wasteland!

Strategy

To achieve our proposition through 3 stages:

Sound Healing: Heatwaves, droughts and floods have become a regular fixture in the news, which bombarded us everyday through social media. Why don’t we escape from reality a while, remedy anxieties and manage what’s in our control through ears by putting your earbuds on during daily commute?
Community Voice: When their anxiety is relieved, looking for other like-minded individuals and hear their voice is another meaningful coping method. If you can’t find any within your own community, you can always join a community that we specifically designed for people struggling with climate anxiety online.
Actions: Even though no single person can cure the climate crisis, we can each make changes in our individual lives to combat it when we are ready (and ease our climate anxiety in the process). Finding ways to take climate action that aligns with your own resources, strengths, skills, and interests is a really important way to help manage your individual climate distress. For example, reading an article about climate anxiety.

Thus, breaking the vicious cycle of climate anxiety and help people beyond paralysis and into action.

Final outcomes

We envision our service can encourage more people to value and treat climate anxiety. After long-term healing, we want more people to take actions with a healthy mind of state. Our bigger picture is that since climate change is a global issue that will last almost forever, we can use this platform to collect people’s moods and attitude and use the data to motivate the government and related authorities to take action. With the efforts of all stakeholders, we will have more faith in our environmental doom.

SPECIAL
THANKS

Team