As adaptation becomes increasingly imperative, designers have an important role to play in community capacity building and engagement through creative design thinking techniques. This is a proposal for a ‘Speedtalk’, and ‘Poster Session’ related to the authors’ (4^th Honours Griffith University Visual Communication Design students) engagement in a project on going since 2015, exploring how design students might contribute to Climate Change adaptation and planning. The project has been guided by our Design Supervisor, Tristan Schultz, The Griffith Centre for Coastal Management (GCCM) and the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF).

We propose a creative and performative ‘speedtalk’ exploring our Design Fictions from the project. This oral and pictorial performance will illustrate scenarios of how designed events, participatory design and social innovation bring to focus, question and shift perceptions in the public sphere of; Coastal Management, Climate Change adaptation planning, measures of risk in todays industrial society and patterns of behaviour restricting adaptation.

We see this occurring after a 15-minute presentation on the pedagogical and theoretical background that our supervisor will give.

We would also like to submit a poster for the ‘poster session’. In the poster talk we will extend on our ‘speedtalk’ by discussing the role of information design in Climate Change adaptation.