The annual Sustainability and Community Conference brought together leaders, practitioners, students, and concerned citizens for a powerful day of dialogue, innovation, and collaboration. Held on September 16 at the Bezalel Academy of Arts & Design in Jerusalem, the gathering centered on how local climate policies can be effectively implemented.
The programme featured 14 parallel sessions ranging from nature-based solutions to design and adaptation, community engagement, and energy transitions. What made the day unique was how deeply participatory many of the sessions were: nearly a quarter of the programme consisted of workshops where attendees wrote on shared boards, discussed side by side and became co-creators. Your description of turning “participants from listeners into partners in the creation of knowledge” resonated throughout the day.
One of the most illuminating panels featured Elad Levy, Chair of the Agricultural Committee and Deputy Head of the Regional Council of Gezer, speaking on the case of the Gezer Regional Council: “The story is all about relationships. The story is about trust.” As he described how a rural-agricultural authority, its farming community and environmental goals can align, participants arrived at one clear message: climate action only works when it lives in the fabric of community, place and everyday relationships.
Throughout the day, we felt the energy among participants. In corridors, on terrace benches and between sessions, attendees formed new alliances: design students from Bezalel collaborated with municipal sustainability officers, local authorities compared notes on their climate-action plans, and community practitioners found fresh partners. One participant later commented, “I came expecting two or three ideas but I found a team to pilot with.” It was a reminder that genuine sustainability emerges not from slides and speeches alone, but from networks and relationships built in real time.
As the conference drew to a close, the final plenary invited commitments. Several municipalities pledged to launch pilot climate-action plans in the coming year, youth groups vowed pop-up “cool city” interventions, and civil-society organizations offered to map informal neighbourhood networks to deepen engagement. The closing message was clear: this was not an event for applause, but a starting point for transformation. With trust, participation and local place-based action at its heart, this conference succeeded in showing what it means to turn climate policy into lived, connected community resilience.