"It is about concrete forms of making social issues visible in a spirit of solidarity"

"The climate crisis is the global challenge of the 21st century. Its effects are not only felt ecologically, but also socially," says Dr Michael Böwer, who holds the professorship for Theories and Methods of Social Work in the Social Work degree programme at Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences. "The social crisis is provoking questions about peace, human rights, education, social justice, health, refugee migration, gender and post-colonialism - and therefore also for us in academic training," he emphasises with regard to the expertise in his faculty. As an organisational and child protection researcher, he approached the Bremerhaven Climate House to talk to those responsible there about the possibilities of cooperation on social climate impacts and educational work.

The most recent Friday lecture was very concrete: after an impulse on the management classic "Images of Organisation" by Gareth Morgan, the students did not remain seated on the folding seats in the lecture theatre, but moved to the steps in the foyer of the Klimahaus with a smart mob. The smart mob is a sub-form of the flash mob, developed by the American Howard Rheingold. A seemingly spontaneous crowd of people comes together in a (semi-)public place and delivers a social message to the surprised passers-by. "We met groups of schoolchildren and senior citizens, families walked past us into the exhibition area - and some of them looked up in amazement when, at my signal, groups of two to four students stood up one after the other and presented the organisation as a total, fluid, changing or power-occupied system in short scenes using pantomime or spoken dialogue," reports Professor Böwer. "Because regardless of whether it's Fridays For Future, Last Generation, the World Climate Summit, a global corporation, companies, authorities, the European Parliament or the Bundestag - social mechanisms are at work in organisations everywhere, driving things forward or blocking them, encountering opposition or even scenes that negate the climate crisis in a backward-looking way."

Michael Böwer emphasises that this needs to be countered with education. In schools and universities, but also in public places: "It's about concrete forms of making social issues visible in a spirit of solidarity - that's something you don't learn from a textbook, but in a real-life laboratory." The smart mob will be followed by intensive student engagement with learning in and the culture of organisations using the specific example of the social impact of the climate crisis and sustainability.