Finding our voice: How storytelling shapes communication in CARE

On World Environment Day, we take you behind the scenes of our storytelling process — and show how a shared language can drive real change.

What does it take to change everyday behaviour — not through guilt, but through connection and community?

At CARE, we believe that communication is more than a supporting function. It’s a driving force for transformation. To support circular living in European households, we knew from the start that we’d need more than facts and figures. We needed a story. One that feels relatable, inclusive, and empowering.

CARE is a Horizon Europe project that explores how everyday household routines can become more circular. From food waste to clothing consumption, the project supports households in five European countries as they test new, more sustainable ways of living — supported by social science, particularly practice theory, practical tools and tailored communication. The goal: to reduce material footprints by enabling small but meaningful and realistic changes in everyday life.

As we mark World Environment Day and prepare for our presentation at the EU Green Week in Brussels, we’d like to take you behind the scenes of our communication work. From the co-creation of a common vision to the design of our explainer videos in six languages, this is the story of how we built a shared language for change — with households, creatives, and experts all around the table.

Why we started with storytelling

When CARE launched, one of our first actions wasn’t to produce materials — it was to bring people together. In a series of storytelling workshops, we invited project partners to share their perspectives: What do circular lifestyles mean to them? What barriers do households face? What words feel inspiring, and which feel out of reach? With this, we weren’t just collecting messages. We were building a shared narrative that could travel across countries, cultures and communication styles.

Screenshot from CARE’s internal Storytelling Workshop. | Copyright CSCP

“At the heart of CARE is a co-creation approach. We wanted to create a language that empowers, not instructs — and that reflects the everyday reality of households.” – Eva Rudolf, Senior Designer at the CSCP and Creative Lead for CARE

These workshops laid the foundation for everything that followed: our vision, mission, key phrases, and ultimately, the tone and design of our communication strategy. It helped us define not just what CARE stands for, but how we want people to feel when they engage with us.

Finding our shared language — from key phrases to Circular Friends

Once we had a common foundation, we turned words into meaning. Together with the project team, we distilled the outcomes of the workshops into a vision and mission that reflect the heart of CARE — and translate abstract ideas like “circularity” into something people can relate to.

We worked with phrases that evoke everyday relevance. They were designed to be short and clear so that households can relate to. These phrases became the building blocks for our communication strategy and they also inspired more playful versions for videos and campaigns, such as: “Sustainability starts at home with CARE” or “When we CARE, we thrive.”

To make these values visible, we created the Circular Friends. Formerly known as “Heroes”, we deliberately moved away from the idea of individual heroism. Why? Because real change doesn’t need heroes. It needs companions, encouragement, and shared responsibility in a community — not individual pressure.

We believe that sustainable living shouldn’t place an additional burden, especially for those who are already juggling care work, tight budgets, or time constraints. That’s why the interventions in CARE are designed to support both the household and the wider ecosystem: making clothes last longer, wasting less food, and sharing knowledge locally can benefit both. At the heart of each pilot is a local community, because support, motivation, and real change grow stronger when people learn together. Wellbeing and community are not add-ons in CARE, they’re part of its backbone.

CARE’s circular friends in the earlier development phase – displaying a diversity in the characters. | © CSCP

Together with a graphic design student, we brought the Circular Friends to life. They are diverse in age, background, household type and lifestyle. And they represent real people across Europe. They are not perfect. But they try, learn, and adapt — just like the households in our pilots.

“I didn’t want to draw idealised characters. I wanted to create figures that felt familiar and approachable, like someone you might know.” – Sophie-Anne Val, Design Student at the CSCP and Visual Contributor to CARE

From stories to screens — co-creating our explainer videos

The Circular Friends also inspired the explainer videos: short animated films that introduce the project’s ideas in a light, engaging way. Available in six languages, the videos are tailored to be inclusive, culturally adaptable and easy to understand for a wide audience.

For now, the videos are primarily used within the CARE project to introduce households to key ideas and create a shared foundation. At the end of the project, they will be part of a comprehensive CARE toolbox designed to support organisations working with households across Europe. Our aim is to make the communication tools not only effective within CARE, but also meaningful and usable beyond it.

The first script draft emerged from within the CARE team. It was rooted in everything we had co-created: tone, imagery, and values. From there, the script evolved through close collaboration with our student designer Sophie-Anne, our content and creative team at CSCP (Katrin, Eva, and Nikola), and the C&D working group within the CARE consortium, coordinated by Tampere University. To bring the script to life, we worked with Lichtspieler, a creative agency specialising in animated explainer formats with an ethical focus.

“What stood out in this project was how much care went into every word. The team really wanted to speak with households, not at them.” – Katrin Hüttepohl, Communication Manager at the CSCP and Lead of the Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation work package in CARE.

Excerpt from the initial storyboard of CARE’s explainer videos. | Copyright Lichtspieler

To reflect this approach visually, the videos were developed in a style that blends animated storytelling with a touch of video game aesthetics: simple, playful, and dynamic. The colour palette and overall tone draw directly from the CARE visual identity, ensuring coherence across all channels. This design was carefully chosen to appeal to a wide household audience: approachable enough to feel light, but thoughtful enough to be taken seriously. As Kirsten Piepenbring, an illustrator at our video partner Lichtspieler, puts it: “We opted for a playful approach to emphasise the fun of participating in the project without losing sight of the seriousness of the topic.”

The result is a set of videos that avoids the usual “instructional” tone. Instead, it invites. It reflects. It makes space for different realities. And above all, it encourages action — not through pressure, but through recognition.

Communication as a driver of change

Communication in CARE isn’t an afterthought — it’s part of the method. From the very beginning, it complemented the scientific expertise and local knowledge within the project, helping us to meet people where they are: in their homes, their routines, their daily realities. That’s why we made language, visuals and tone part of the intervention itself. Not just explaining the project, but shaping how people experience it.

“Good communication doesn’t simplify reality. It makes it accessible. It turns data into direction, and strategies into stories.” – Katrin Hüttepohl

This approach also supports inclusion, which is not only a core value in CARE, but a fundamental principle at the CSCP. Whether a household is single, multilingual, rural, urban, young, elderly, low-income or in transition, our storytelling aims to reflect their diversity and complexity. Because sustainable living should be possible for everyone.

Watch, reflect, and stay curious

If you’d like to see how our storytelling approach comes to life, we invite you to watch our explainer videos, available in six languages. From tone to imagery, they reflect the shared language we’ve co-created with our team, our partners and our creative contributors.

Explore how small, mindful actions can reduce food waste and improve circularity at home. This video highlights relatable challenges and practical solutions, from meal planning to community support, showing how CARE empowers households to make a big difference – one meal at a time.

From buying thoughtful to mending and upcycling, the following video showcases relatable scenarios and innovative solutions to foster sustainable clothing practices. Together with CARE, we can make a positive impact – one outfit at a time.

We also encourage you to take a closer look at how CARE communicates across channels – today and in the future: from posters to project website, from personas to policy briefs. You may notice that our colours, words and structures are designed with care to be inclusive, motivating and meaningful.

World Environment Day and EU Green Week – join the conversation

The publication of this article coincides with World Environment Day 2025, a global reminder that the future of our planet starts at home. It also marks CARE’s presence at the EU Green Week in Brussels, where our colleague Eva will share insights on how storytelling can support circular lifestyles in practice.

We’re excited to join this broader dialogue and to connect with others working to make sustainability not only achievable, but desirable. Whether you’re a policy-maker, a practitioner, a fellow project partner or simply curious: we invite you to explore the communication work behind CARE. If you’d like to learn more, exchange ideas, or explore collaboration opportunities, don’t hesitate to get in touch. We look forward to hearing from you — and to shaping the future of circular living, together.

Together with CARE, we transform our world for the better.

Header image: © Lichtspieler