Climate change communication faces a persistent gap between knowledge and action. People are increasingly informed about climate change yet often lack the emotional engagement, sustainability competencies, and sense of personal agency needed to take meaningful climate action. Based on the organizational needs of the Swiss non-profit Climanosco, a participatory art-climate science workshop was developed as an outreach format that complements and draws from their existing activities. This internship-based thesis follows a practice-based, design-thinking and mixed-methods approach to address the question: "How can an art-science workshop be designed to cultivate sustainability competencies and support transformative sustainability learning using Climanosco's climate science articles and artistic works?" The study is grounded in three complementary frameworks: the nine dimensions of creative practice (Vervoort et al., 2024), the five meta-phases of transformative learning and emotions (Grund et al., 2024), and the eight sustainability competencies (Redman & Wiek, 2021). The central hypothesis is that activating more creative practice dimensions and transformative learning phases creates stronger conditions for sustainability competency development and more meaningful engagement overall.

Autoethnographic field research across five sustainability workshops in Zürich revealed a consistent pattern: existing formats convey systems knowledge but fall short in activating the creative and emotional dimensions that matter for meaningful engagement. Informed by this fieldwork, the Urban Climate Circles (UCC) workshop was designed as an eight-phase format and piloted on April 9th, 2026 at Impact Hub Viadukt, Zürich (n=8). Findings indicate all eight sustainability competencies scored above the midpoint post-workshop. The dominant pre-workshop emotion of concern shifted to motivation to act in 7/8 participants, while paralyzing emotions were eliminated entirely. Agreement with the personal agency statement increased from 4/6 to 7/8 participants. These findings suggest that a single art-climate science workshop, designed to activate multiple creative dimensions and the full emotional arc of transformative learning, can meaningfully shift sustainability competency self-perception, emotional engagement, and climate agency. Future research should explore longitudinal follow-ups to assess whether these shifts translate into sustained climate action and which design dimensions are worth focusing on further.