Inspiring Climate Culture through Film & TV
When entertainment reflects life authentically, impact knows no bounds. Now imagine that potential for climate action…
Rare’s Entertainment Lab, an initiative of Rare’s Climate Culture program, supports writers and creators in telling stories that reflect our changing world, inspire audiences at home, and drive change around us. Based on Rare’s core expertise in behavioral science research, insights, and guidelines, our support includes workshops, events, consultations, audience surveys, public opinion research, and impact measurement and evaluation.
Driving learning and developing tools
Supporting writers and creators to tell stories that reflect our changing world, inspire audiences at home, and drive change around us.
Rare’s Entertainment Lab in the Media
‘The visuals of today help create the reality of tomorrow:’ Why Hollywood is finally tackling climate change onscreen
Featuring Rare Entertainment Lab’s Dr. Anirudh Tiwathia
68 Climate Leaders Changing The Film And TV Industry
Featuring Rare Entertainment Lab’s Ellis Watamanuk, Anirudh Tiwathia, Ph.D., Laurel Tamayo and Valdo Viana.
Shifting Our Climate Culture
With an in-house team of social scientists, Rare’s Entertainment Lab brings behavioral insights to Hollywood, helping creators tell climate-friendly stories that put high-impact everyday actions on screen across genres and formats.
Rare’s Entertainment Lab provides support including:
- Workshops and events
- Story consultation
- Resources, tip sheets, and behavioral science guidelines
- Audience surveys and public opinion research
- Impact measurement and evaluation
- Behavioral research to improve climate communication
And more. We are excited to find new and innovative ways to work with our partners.
Get in touch!
Contact our team at entertainment.lab@rare.org
Past Work
We have worked with studios, media companies, and climate advocates focused on the entertainment industry to use behavioral insights to enhance a range of initiatives aimed at moving viewers toward climate action.
With partners Sony Pictures Animation and Sony Pictures Entertainment, we hosted a workshop for storytellers on incorporating plant-rich diets in narratives effectively and creatively.
We have advised on climate action platforms for Netflix titles, including Breaking Boundaries and Don’t Look Up, Our Great National Parks, and Down to Earth with Zac Efron: Down Under.
Rare partnered on Good Energy: A Playbook for Screenwriting in the Age of Climate Change, a first-of-it-kind interactive resource for writers and creatives in Hollywood to learn and explore how to incorporate climate into their stories. Rare supported the Solutions on Screen section and penned How Minds Change On-Screen and At Home.
We have worked with media partners to design rigorous studies that can quantify the impact of individual content (e.g., a film) on the climate beliefs and attitudes of audiences at home. We are also developing standardized impact evaluation tools and methods for wider use across the industry.
Rare hosted the How Minds Change Workshop at the 2022 Hollywood Climate Summit.
About Our Team
 |
Ellis Watamanuk, Sr. Director of Entertainment Ellis Watamanuk is a media impact producer and strategist working at the intersection of storytelling and climate action. He’s worked on campaigns for Blackfish, Paris to Pittsburgh, Other Side of the Hill, and more. In addition to his work in climate, he has led impact campaigns for films like Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, We the Animals, and A Thousand Cuts, and distributed films including The Miseducation of Cameron Post. As the Sr. Director of Entertainment at Rare, he brings the organization’s behavioral science expertise to the entertainment industry, leveraging the power of storytelling to create new cultural norms around climate. |
 |
Anirudh Tiwathia, Lead Behavioral Scientist Anirudh Tiwathia is a behavioral scientist and public policy specialist who works on pathways to encourage climate action. At Rare’s Center for Behavior & the Environment, Anirudh focuses on the use of mass-media and entertainment to influence climate beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. In previous work, he examined the psychological underpinnings of liberal democracy and the antecedents of voluntary compliance. Anirudh has also worked for tech start-ups and in intergovernmental organizations like UNDP and UNICEF. He holds an MBA and PhD (Behavioral Policy) from the Booth School of Business; an MA (Public Policy) and a PhD (Cognitive Psychology) from the University of Chicago; and a BA from Vassar College. |
 |
Valdo Viana, Behavioral Science Associate Valdo Viana is a graduate economist and researcher who focuses his work on climate adaptation through a community-based approach. He has previous experience in research and data visualization for conservation projects, project management in the development sector, and content development in a publication for Asia-Pacific projects. At Rare’s Center for Behavior & the Environment, Valdo applies his econometrics and project management expertise to support research efforts related to the intersection of climate action and entertainment. |
 |
Laurel Tamayo, Impact Associate Laurel Tamayo is an impact producer passionate about communicating the climate crisis through film & TV. She worked on the impact campaign for I Am Greta, inspiring the audience to take action on climate change. Her past experience also includes programming at the Hollywood Climate Summit and project management of the Good Energy Playbook. She is currently in the Harvard Executive Education Program working on her Public Leadership certificate, where she was awarded the Bacon Climate Leadership scholarship. As the Program Associate at Rare’s Entertainment Lab, she uses finding from Rare’s research to inform the creation of resources and workshops for writers to integrate climate-friendly behaviors on screen. |