What is Cool Communications Arts?
Cool Communications Arts is a community engagement strategy for building heat resilience with creativity and storytelling. Cities are getting hotter, and our communities are facing increasing risk from extreme heat with often limited resources to adapt. Communication is key to building awareness and capacity for heat resilience, yet traditional aren’t effectively reaching priority populations before, during, and after heat events. As extreme heat becomes part of daily life rather than a rare emergency, we need to move from short-term alerts and start cultivating a lasting “cool culture” that shapes everyday community practices.
In early 2025, MAPC collaborated with Mystic River Watershed Association (MyRWA) and launched a Call for Artists to imagine creative ways of engaging communities around heat. The goal is to complement traditional heat messaging, such as social media, city websites, flyers, mailers, and local TV, and by using art and storytelling, to build more interactive conversations with communities, especially those most vulnerable to heat. Three artist groups were selected to develop prototypes, piloted across Lower Mystic communities over the summer, to spark conversations, strengthen social ties, and build resilience.
This Cool Communications Arts Toolbox shares those prototypes and invites heat stakeholders across the region to adapt, use, and expand them. Explore the creative tools below and let us know if you would like to bring these “cool” activities and materials into your events or host one of the toolkits in your community. We also welcome contributions of additional heat engagement practices and resources to grow the toolbox further.
Tropical Resilience Lounge
Tropical Resilience Lounge is a playful, tropical-themed pop-up designed to spark meaningful community dialogue about heat resilience. Framed as an oasis of joy and reflection, it invites people to step into a welcoming, multi-sensory environment where they can connect, share stories and perspectives, and exchange ideas and information about staying cool together. The package includes:
>> Sculptural palm trees & curated tropical soundscape
Tip: Some popsicles will make it COOLER.
>> Zines with cooling tips and resources (Click to download)
(Six languages available: Arabic, Chinese, English, Haitian Creole, Portuguese, and Spanish).
Event photos:
Animals Are Cool
“Animals Are Cool” is an engagement tool to work with elementary aged children to create resources that can share knowledge with their similar aged peers. It draws on the artists’ combined experience as educators and artists and engages youth as important conveyors of information to their community, and as one of the groups most highly critically impacted by heat. By learning how animals deal with heat in unique ways with illustrations and poems, kids are inspired to think about how they stay cool and keep their communities safe in summer. This package includes:
>>”Animals Are Cool” Activities Guide & Illustrations (Click to download)
>>Booklet with illustrations and poems (Click to download)
(Six languages available: Arabic, Chinese, English, Haitian Creole, Portuguese, and Spanish)
>>Coloring sheets (Click to download)
>>Stickers (Click to download)
Event Photos:
Cool Communications Network
Cool Communications Network is a storytelling toolkit that explores the social dimension of extreme heat. Through oral histories and story exchange, CCN amplifies community voices and experiences of rising temperatures. This package includes:
>>Heat Oral History Kit
(Contact us to request a physical copy.)
Each kit includes a deck of heat cards with conversation-starting questions, an oral history guidebook, postcards and stickers, a Mini Fan to stay cool during interviews.
>>Heat gumball machines filled with story prompts
(Contact us to request a physical copy.)
Heat Gumball Machines are filled with story prompts, heat-themed trinkets and stickers, and useful tips for staying cool. They encourage community members to share personal stories, creative writing, and mementos shaped by heat, and can be installed in libraries, community centers, parks, and government offices.
Contact Us
Interested in using the tools? Email us at coolcommsart@mapc.org
To learn more about the project, visit the project website here.