Local Storytelling
In 2021, Urban Ecology offered to serve as a fiscal agent for a ground-breaking, hyper-local, journalism and community storytelling platform based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
KneeDeepTimes is a digital online magazine featuring stories from the frontlines of climate resilience in the San Francisco Bay Area and California. As the impacts of fires, smoke, floods, climate extremes and environmental inequities have all intensified, the magazine has examined reverberating responses from communities of all sizes. Launched in September 2021 and still thriving in 2024, this platform for community storytelling connects real people and real places and shares their views and voices. The magazine also explores our core adaptation problem: how to involve people of all ages, cultures, incomes, and experiences in creating a more resilient and just future for the region. www.kneedeeptimes.org
Milestones
Published more than 330 stories (check out the News Archive) between September 2021-December 2024.
- Reached out to new audiences and covered under-covered communities in the Bay Area struggling
with climate change and environmental inequities (Equity Stories). - Completed an in-depth, five part, 15 story investigative series called Extremes-in-3D, with a grant from
the CO2 Foundation. - Involved and mentored dozens of young and emerging journalists in climate reporting projects (Inspiration Team).
California Climate Quilt
This citizen storytelling project of KneeDeep Times offers a more informal platform for communities, individuals and young people to share their views and experiences of climate change. KneeDeep is working to build the California Climate Quilt as an incremental story of the many kinds of actions necessary to confront climate change.
Other Grants
Through Urban Ecology, KneeDeep Times has also been awarded grants from the Resources Legacy Fund and the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority.