Cool Communications Arts Toolbox
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, Metro Boston's regional planning agency, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), collaborated with Mystic River Watershed Association (MyRWA) to bring creative approaches to five municipalities working together to improve communication with their residents about extreme heat. MAPC and MyRWA launched a Call for Artists to imagine creative ways of engaging communities around heat. The goal was to complement traditional heat messaging, such as social media, city websites, flyers, mailers, and local TV, and use art and storytelling to build more interactive conversations with communities, especially those most vulnerable to heat. Three artist teams were selected to develop prototypes, piloted across the Lower Mystic communities (Malden, Everett, Chelsea, Revere and Winthrop) over the summer, to spark conversations, strengthen social ties, and build resilience.
This Cool Communications Arts Toolbox shares those prototypes and the reusable materials that were created and adapted for the municipalities to use throughout the project. The Toolbox 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.
Cool Communications Design Packets
Cool Communications Design Packets are a series of Canva brand kits and templates adapted and expanded from the Cool Communications engagement tools. This suite is designed to support heat preparedness before a heat event, as well as ongoing heat communication throughout the summer. The materials provide engaging visual assets and heat messages with clear and simple actions for residents to protect themselves and their loved ones while enjoying the season safely.
Animals Are Cool
A vibrant, illustrated style featuring animals and their heat-beating adaptations, developed in partnership with artist Hania Mariën.
View the design packet below:
Heat Design by Depict Brands
An expansive library of heat graphics, template and guidelines organized by heat season, with various layouts suited for graphic-, photo-, and text-based designs by Eileen Riestra
View the design packet below:
Flyer Templates (8.5x11):
Preseason | First Heatwave | Mid Summer
Social Media Templates (4x5):
Preseason | Preseason – Emergency Kit
First Heatwave-1 | First Heatwave-2
Heat Message Library
A Heat Message Library with ready-to-use, pre-translated messages organized by heat season — from pre-season preparedness and cooling tips to heat illness signs and high-risk groups — so users can quickly customize materials for their community.
Animals Are Cool
Heat Design by Depict Brands
Heat Message Library
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 multi-sensory, tactile engagement kits and story-exchange gumball machines that can be borrowed from MAPC.
>>Heat Oral History Kit (Contact us to submit a request for temporary use)
Designed and assembled by artist and urban planner Daphne Lundi, the heat oral history kit features a deck of tarot-deck-inspired cards with conversation-starting questions about heat experiences. The kit also includes an oral history guidebook, postcards and stickers, and a mini fan to stay cool during interviews.
>>Hot Takes Gumball Machines (Contact us to submit a request for temporary use)
Tropical Resilience Lounge
Tropical Resilience Lounge is a playful, tropical-themed pop-up created by Carolyn Lewenberg as a space to spark meaningful community dialogue about heat resilience. Framed as an oasis of joy and reflection and featuring tropical soundscapes by artist Edwardo Chacon, the lounge 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 lounge engagement can be commissioned directly from the artists. Zines designed in partnership with Eileen Riestra are available to download and use below. Elements of the creative engagement include:
>> Sculptural palm trees & curated tropical soundscape (not available from MAPC)
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. These materials, designed by artist Hania Mariën with poems by Anna Deloia, were used by the artists to engage children in conversations about heat in June 2025. 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:
Contact Us
Interested in using the engagement tools or accessing the Canva design packets? Email us at coolcommsart@mapc.org
To learn more about the project, visit the project website here.
Acknowledgement: This project was funded by an Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Action Grant.