“Reading it opened up a whole new world.” Kim Steele on building her company ‘Documentaries Don’t Work’

In this episode, host Kacie speaks with ⁠Kim Steele⁠, founder of the production company ⁠Documentaries Don’t Work⁠, about her analysis of dominant climate communication approaches and her decision to build narrative film projects as an alternative vehicle for public engagement. Steele explains how her background in entertainment shaped her thinking about scale, audience reach, and impact, and why she believes traditional documentary formats often fall short. Drawing on early experiments, including a pitch competition and audience feedback, she discusses how testing climate storytelling ideas in public has shaped the direction of her work and her efforts to move beyond the usual audiences. The transcript below has been edited for clarity and length:

Kacie: Welcome to Consider This Next, an audio program from the Civic Science Media Lab. I’m your host, Kacie Luaders. This show is for civic science entrepreneurs, the researchers, communicators, artists, and organizers finding new ways to connect scientific knowledge with community action. Each episode, we’ll talk with practitioners who are rethinking how science gets shared, who it reaches, and what it can accomplish. This season, we’re taking the show in a new direction. We’re exploring what it means to be a civic science entrepreneur, people who are building something new at the intersection of science communication and public engagement. These are founders, creators, and innovators who aren’t waiting for institutions to change. They’re creating their own platforms, companies, and projects to move science out of traditional channels and into the spaces where people actually live. Today, we’re exploring how narrative storytelling can transform climate communication with Kim Steele, founder of the production company Documentaries Don’t Work. Kim brings a unique perspective as an entertainment professional with a background in film and Broadway performance who found her way to climate communication through an unexpected encounter with fiction. In our conversation, we’ll explore why Kim believes traditional approaches to climate messaging may be missing their mark and what entertainment can offer that data alone cannot. Join us as we consider what happens when we stop talking at people about climate science and start inviting them into stories. Kim Steele, thank you so much for joining us today. I would love for you to start by introducing yourself and letting the folks know a little bit more about what it is that you do.

Kim Steele: Of course, thanks for having me. And I love the generous description of me as a science communicator. I’m going to take that and run with it, add it to my 2026 elevator pitch. So how I came to this endeavor, I’ll call it, which is Documentaries Don’t Work, my production company, is my background is in entertainment. So I studied film and theater. I performed on Broadway for many years, and then the pandemic shut down my Broadway show, and I was like, okay, I was like, okay, I want to find something else to do with my life. Whenever you start with that, it’s like a very blank slate. And I had, during this time, I also convinced my mother to go back to school, and she was reading this book called Parable of the Sower, I don’t know if you’re familiar, by Octavia Butler, in her English class, and she gave it to me. It was like, hey, Kim, I think you’ll like this. And I read it, and it completely just blew my mind and really opened up a whole new world for me in terms of what communicating about climate and politics and policy could be, what sort of, what types of characters we could filter science communication through, because I had never seen a character like the lead in that book, who was a fourteen-year-old Black girl, and we follow her through dystopian, near-future, climate-devastated Los Angeles. So anyway, my imagination was just woken up in terms of how we can communicate about science. And so where I came up with Documentaries Don’t Work is I just noticed that we’re communicating about science in a very highly intellectualized way that is not only not reaching the masses, because most people don’t watch climate documentaries, but even those that do, it doesn’t necessarily stick with their hearts in a way to spur them to broad, mass, large-scale climate action in this country. It works in other countries, maybe, but not this one. So Documentaries Don’t Work. We infuse climate comms into regular narrative films, starting with a rom-com that I’m producing, and then our very next first piece of content is a web series. Yeah, that’s the long version.

Kacie: So what I’m curious about is the fact that you come from an entertainment background and not necessarily from a science or a climate background. Tell me a little bit more about why this became the focus of your production company. Why did you feel that talking about climate issues, climate science, climate change, was something that you had to do?

Kim Steele: Because in reading that work of fiction, I understood something that I previously thought had nothing to do with me. I thought it wasn’t my story. I never saw myself as being someone who is affected by climate change in my day-to-day life, or I just didn’t think it had anything to do with me or my legacy or posterity, my posterity. So I was pleasantly surprised to be stirred up so emotionally and so in my heart by what is the greatest existential issue of our lifetime. And it’s such a grand story and has such room for every, all types of perspectives and colors and emotions. And I think I chose it because I was gagged at how sterile we are when we talk about this big, huge, beautiful, tragic story of our planet and of the environment, and the fact that you can only find info, you know, about it in textbooks or at COP conferences or on TED Talks. I was like, this is not where the story of climate change needs to live. It needs to live, like, in works of fiction and in works of art.

Kacie: So you’re saying that in engaging with the arts, it sparked something in you that then led you to figure out how to communicate about science?

Kim Steele: Exactly, yes, that’s exactly right. Like, I could have wrote a book since I was inspired by the book, but that’s not what I do. Actually, I’m glad you bring that up, because one of the big issues that I have come across when thinking about how to communicate about science is scale. And so my whole thing about how a Hollywood blockbuster has a hundred times the impact of any bit of research that anyone is doing in a lab in Connecticut or any conference here and there, it just, nothing tops the reach of a Hollywood film. And so that is where I was like, oh, this is my vehicle to tackle that issue with climate change only reaching certain people or appealing to certain people on such a small scale. And also not just in the U.S., a lot of people don’t know, but even countries that have very well-developed film and TV industries, like Korea, the K-dramas, India has Bollywood, fifty, sixty, seventy percent of their box office revenue is still coming from American-made films. Yes. So a film that I make here that has the chance to reach people all over the world, because all eyes are on the United States when it comes to film and TV. And so I think we’ve been really irresponsible, actually, when it comes to how we portray climate, or whether we portray it at all, in TV and film. And actually, I think it’s by design, but we’ll get into that in another conversation. But I think Big Oil has its little tentacles in Hollywood, and that’s why we don’t talk about electrification and all these sorts of things on screen. Interesting.

Kacie: Can you tell me who have been some of the key partnerships, whether that’s people, organizations, as you are developing this endeavor, who are some of the folks who you have told this idea to and they were like, yes, come do this, or we want to help you do that? How does this spark turn into, hopefully, a controlled burn of a flame? Sorry, climate people. Yes, who were some of the key partnerships?

Kim Steele: So the first people to take a big swing on my idea, but quite successfully, if I might add, was Climate Film Festival in New York. So there is such a thing, there’s only one thing, but there is such a thing as Climate Film Festival. And when you see film and climate or environmentalism, it’s like everyone in the country is doing documentaries. Everyone is putting all of the resources behind documentaries. And Climate Film Festival, I pitched them an idea of having a pitch competition for filmmakers to come up with a climate idea. And they didn’t need any script. I wanted to keep the barrier for entry as low as possible. So no script. It didn’t need to be packaged. Just give me your idea for literally anything but a documentary. And so we had it in New York during Climate Week this year. And I was so surprised by the appetite for this sort of competition in terms of how many filmmakers submitted, but also in terms of the audience. Like, we, our space that we ended up having the competition held, like seventy or eighty people, we had a hundred and twenty RSVPs within two seconds. So there, there is an appetite for this. And I’m continuing to do this sort of market research to figure out that people actually do want to see climate stories on screen. And then another partnership that’s doing some good work on the other side of the country is Hollywood Climate Summit. So there’s a group of people who have held a narrative and documentary film climate event in Hollywood for the last, I think, seven years, six or seven years, and they’re doing really great work. However, I will say that it’s expected for the coasts to want to latch onto this type of thing, and my work as a Black woman who lives in the South is not to fall into the trap of too much whiteness, too much leftness, too many blue-haired people only, too many vegans. The whole thing behind my work is I want to get more people into the fray besides the usual suspects. So that’s why I’m pitching a tent down here in Atlanta, in the South, and making this a new hub for this type of storytelling.

Kacie: I think you bring up a really interesting point in that there can be an expected stereotype of a climate activist or a climate educator or a climate scholar. How are you hoping to change that, not even just with Documentaries Don’t Work, those points that you just made? How is storytelling a way that can potentially traverse the sort of existing audiences or stereotypes of an audience in order to reach a broader scope of people?

Kim Steele: Sure, that’s a great question. And one thing I always like to say is we need one thousand and one scripted climate films yesterday. So like, to me, I don’t care who’s making that, like, we need to support every single story that comes down the pipeline. And to do that, we need to support different types of creators, which is why I’m picking up the gamut and, like, trying to get this, get my type of stories that I want to see on screen told. And it’s, it sounds formulaic, like representation is formulaic, but it’s really not. Like, you tell the stories that you tell the stories that are familiar to you. Mostly when we see a climate scientist on screen, what does he look like? He’s in his forties or fifties, and he’s a white man. I would never write that character because I don’t know anything about a white man in their forties or fifties. I don’t even know one, like. So I’m like, by default, because I’m the one that’s crafting the stories, you’re going to get a protagonist that is in her late twenties or early thirties and Black and, like, hot, because that’s me, and I’m putting myself in the story, because I know there are other people out there who want to see themselves or who relate to that type of story. I’m not the one who’s going to say, don’t make a film, a narrative climate film with ten white guys. Sure, do it if that appeals to them. But then also make one with different types of creators and different types of stories, because that’s how you capture the masses. Like, it’s not just, I will say, it’s not just people of color or marginalized people that participate in identity politics when it comes to what they consume. And to on the flip side of that, like, a lot of people are looking for Southern representation. There’s no Southern representation in these stories, which I think is just insane, because you can’t have a movement in America without the South. Like, any movement that has ever gotten anything done in this country, the South has been behind it. So it’s like the fact that the climate story is just ignoring the South as a vehicle for communicating it is just so wild to me. And it goes back to the over-intellectualism and just, yeah, blah, blah, blah. Even though I’m from California and I might not be the person to write this story, I would love to see more Southern stories and more Southern participation in the climate movement.

Kacie: Overall, interesting. So you’ve talked a lot about storytelling and how to connect with audiences from a creative perspective. Have you had any engagement with folks who are in the academic space or in the science space proper, just to figure out ways to collaborate or to just bounce off ideas? Because I think this marriage of folks who are trying to present accurate information, data, research that could potentially help with folks who are looking at ways to augment these stories and get them out to wide audiences is a really useful collaborative pairing. And so I’m wondering, what has your interaction been with the climate science community proper?

Kim Steele: In terms of scientists, I say my fiancé is a neuroscientist, so he’s always, like, fact-checking me when I’m writing things, and he’s like, that makes no sense, you have to do more research there, don’t say that if you don’t know what it means. So I think that’s very useful in terms of connecting with people who actually know anything about science. But something about the work that I’m trying to do right now is I always tell people, like, you’re not going to learn anything about science or about climate change from watching one of my pieces. So if you’re looking for the language, you’re not going to find it. A web series, which is going to be our first piece of content that we’re working on right now, shooting here in Atlanta, it’s called Good Work, and it’s about a woman who is trying to save a public library from being bulldozed down and turned into some sort of corporate whatever, the library and the surrounding trees and all of that. But what it really is about is whether or not you need to be a good person in order to do meaningful good work in the world. And so in that way, like, climate and that cause is the background, but that’s not what it’s about. And I think if we can divorce ourselves for a bit from the science and try to ignite emotional attachments to the science, that’s the step we’re at. Because we don’t need more awareness. We don’t need, we have it. We got it. We know. Everyone knows. Everyone’s ignoring it. So what else is, what is where I come in? If I meet a scientist, I’m like, accuracy is not a high priority of mine. My priority is to get to people’s hearts, which numbers, unfortunately, hasn’t done just yet.

Kacie: I think there’s a tension there that we on this show are often trying to figure out, the tension. But it’s like another guest this season said something about the numbers won’t make you cry. The data doesn’t make you cry. How do I get you to feel something in order to then potentially make a change or even just change your mindset? And so I would love to know, for you, what have you learned in, because this is something that you’ve been doing for the past, a year, I believe it’s been a year, yeah. So in the past year, what have you learned, and what are some of the things that you’re thinking about moving forward?

Kim Steele: The biggest thing I’ve learned is to start with the audience. A lot of climate communication is talking at people and giving them statistics, giving them things to do, giving them action items, when, let’s just talk about America, like, the stories that move people, we have some incredible lore and stories that have come out from such a young country. Like the cowboy, for example, is a huge emblem of American lore. And so there are, the audiences will tell you, like, what moves them, and that’s why I had this pitch competition, because we had an Audience Choice Award. I wanted the audience to tell me who or what types of stories they wanted to hear, which was so interesting, because the judges ended up picking somebody who was not the Audience Choice winner. They ended up picking the story that had a lot of, that was interesting in structure, like it was telling a story of a bunch of conservatives trying to save their town from XYZ, and it had an LGBTQ protagonist and all these formulaic things that were put together that the intellectual crowd is like, oh, this is great, but that’s not what the audience chose. So I’m always looking to do my research and to talk to people and to find out. I guess this does make me a scientist, in a way, because I’m collecting data to find out what it is that could move people, and maybe it’s different from what I think. So I spent the last year really honing in on that, and I think I have a good idea of what types of stories people want to see. Not disaster films. That’s what I’ve gotten, hands down. Nobody wants another disaster film.

Kacie: That’s another really great answer. I love that even if you know you are not a scientist, like, yes, you are collecting data, you are making decisions based on the information that you’ve gotten, you’re observing. And so yes, this is good. Okay, so my final question is, this particular year, when it comes to policies that have either been put in place or removed protections for green initiatives, a lot of just things that people work years and years to get as a part of our federal laws or policies have been taken away. And there’s a lot of flux within the United States, just in the direction of where we’re headed in terms of climate protections. Data centers are popping up left and right. Why do you think that what you’re doing is important right now?

Kim Steele: Somebody told me to never waste a good crisis, and that’s how I feel about this moment in time right now. Like this, when we have our feet to the fire, this is where, you know, champions shine. And so I welcome the challenges of getting this information out in a way that can crack through all of the resistance. And I encourage anyone who is working in the climate science field to double down. And also, as we know, everything is cyclical, so this will not be forever. And now is the time to plan, to experiment, meaning to try new ways to reach people. And instead of harping on the same talking points and doing the same thing over and over again, like now, when everyone is chaos and no one’s really paying attention, now is the time to take big swings, big risks, so that when corporations are excited about climate again, we can have all of our research and our films and everything just ready to go. Because whoever the next administration is, things may be completely night and day from what they are now. So never waste a good crisis. Double down, and our time will come, because that’s how the world grows. It’s the circle of life.

Kacie: How can people find out more about you and stay up to date with all the work that you’re doing?

Kim Steele: So I’m really excited for this piece of content that I’m making, this web series, to come out. So that’s what I’m going to be talking the most about. I don’t know if people, like, listen, the science community, you guys are probably on LinkedIn. So I’m very active on LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn. It’s so fun. So you can find me on LinkedIn. It’s Kim Steele. Just put in Kim Steele’s Documentaries Don’t Work, or I think my handle is, like, Climate Kim or something like that. So find me there. I’ll be rolling out the web series. I’ll be posting my hot takes on facts and fiction and all sorts of things, and hopefully we can build a fun community on LinkedIn of people who want to talk about this in a way that is new and exciting and innovative.

Kacie: Now that we’ve heard the conversation about narrative climate storytelling with Kim Steele, when it comes to reaching new audiences and inspiring action on climate and other scientific issues, consider this next. How might embedding your message within stories people already want to experience be more effective than leading with data? Kim’s observations challenge us to find the emotional core of the science we communicate. Are you starting with your audience or talking at them? Understanding what stories and characters resonate with people you’re trying to reach may be more valuable than perfecting your talking points. Could you expand who sees themselves in your science communication? Diverse storytellers can reach audiences traditional approaches may miss. And finally, what would it look like to take a big swing right now? In moments of uncertainty, experimentation and trying new approaches may prepare us for when conditions shift again.

Thank you for joining us.

Audio Studio

Audio programs on the CSM Network feature in-depth interviews with diverse experts who share actionable insights from their work on topical issues in civic science from multiple perspectives. The audio format provides guests with an additional way to share new insights, creating a synergistic effect with other programs on the network, on video and digital print.