Adam Cooper is the Founder Director of Threads in the Ground, a North East England-based organisation pioneering creative, community-led climate hope projects. Growing up in a family connected to the oil industry, Adam experienced climate denial firsthand and is now focused on passing a positive, generative heritage to his son while empowering local communities to explore climate action with agency and optimism.
Threads in the Ground delivers three core strands of work: Mushroom Sculpt, where schools and community groups design sculptures from mycelium bio-materials; Food Futures, where volunteers co-create feasts to explore emerging food systems; and Carbon Heritage, engaging colliery communities in conversations about their coal legacy and climate futures. All projects are co-produced with communities, centering creativity, play, and hope as gateways to understanding climate and systemic change.
Adam also facilitates the Durham Energy Council, a collective of 30 community members exploring energy policy, producing the Durham Energy Manifesto as part poetic narrative, part policy guide. His work bridges generations, social classes, and lived experiences, rekindling agency and solidarity in post-industrial communities often disconnected from decision-making.
Challenges Adam navigates include low climate literacy, systemic misinformation, and political polarisation. He approaches these with a values-driven ethos: fostering hope, creativity, long-term commitment, curiosity, and non-ego collaboration.
Trained as a coach and facilitator, Adam brings strong listening, communication, and reflective practice to his work, supporting communities to articulate their ideas and take meaningful climate action. Through the Practice-Builders’ Network, he seeks to exchange learning, refine democratic structures, and connect with others experimenting with just, creative, and community-centered approaches to climate engagement, aiming to strengthen both his practice and the wider movement for local climate empowerment.