Clare Townley
Clare Townley is a Todmorden-based eco-poet, creative climate communicator and former managing director of a green engineering business. Known for a warm, incisive style that blends humour with technical accuracy, Clare helps complex sustainability issues land whilst engaging diverse audiences. Clare’s professional background spans renewable energy, retrofit, community engagement, higher education and creative practice. Her former company was among the UK’s early photovoltaic installers, and she brings over two decades of lived experience of low-carbon technologies including solar PV, biomass heating, air source heat pumps and battery storage. Alongside this, she has undertaken hands-on training in permaculture and regenerative farming, lime plastering, straw bale building, hempcrete, cork and wood-fibre insulation, grounding her work in real buildings, real materials and real-world constraints. Although qualified as both a Carbon Literacy Trainer and a Climate Fresk facilitator, Clare prefers translating these ideas in more adaptable and creative ways through performance, writing and discussion. Her aim is not simply to inform, but to challenge and shift understanding, language and behaviour in an acronym- and jargon-free zone.
Recent work includes Retrofits of Laughter, a growing series of illustrated cards and poems that use humour to open conversations about carbon, green energy, retrofit, transport, greenwashing and everyday climate contradictions. Through satire, analogy and lived experience, Clare translates concepts such as fabric-first retrofit, Scope 3 emissions, sustainability terminology and greenwashing into language people actually remember.
Alongside her climate-focused work, Clare writes and performs a wider range of poetry rooted in language, observation and social insight. This includes playful explorations of wordplay and punctuation, satirical pieces on marketing and sales culture, and reflective writing shaped by rivers, landscapes and grief. Her poem Prefer Not to Say explores equality, identity and belonging in ways that resonate strongly with audiences across the sustainability and public sectors. Clare performs regularly at sustainability, arts and community events. In the last month, she has spoken at a national Flight Free UK event, a Green Economy Networking Brunch in partnership with the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, and a symposium on ‘Co-creating with Communities’, and has been shortlisted for the Calderdale Community Spirit Award (Sustainability).Beyond her creative practice, Clare has played a significant role in place-based regeneration and civic life. She was Deputy Mayor of Calderdale in 2004, led and wrote the winning bid for the Great British High Street competition in 2018, and has received multiple regional awards for environmental design and community impact, reflecting long-term involvement in community politics, disability advocacy, environmental campaigning and inclusive practice. Clare’s work sits at the intersection of behaviour, systems and storytelling, bringing rigour, warmth and originality to conversations about climate, energy, equity and change. She is open to commissions for education, communication, marketing and live performance, where values are shared.