After meteoric growth in recent years, La fresque du climat is going through a difficult time. Certainly, the association has just crossed the milestone of 2 million participants in its climate awareness workshops since their launch in 2018. But it is also parting ways with 20 permanent employees.
Developed in 2015 by the former director of the think tank The Shift Project Cédric Ringenbach, close to the engineer Jean-Marc Jancovici, creator of the carbon footprint, The climate fresco has permanently changed the general public’s relationship with ecology.
The workshops are based on fun and interactive teaching, where participants distribute maps, constructed from the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to highlight the causes and consequences of climate change. In ten years, the format has enjoyed immense success. 60,000 professional and volunteer facilitators, known as “frescours”, organized workshops in France, the game was translated into 46 languages, and many large companies used it: EDF, Orange, Bouygues, Vinci and Saint-Gobain .
Revenues down 35%
How then can we explain that the association is reducing its membership by almost half? The tide has turned: if La fresque experienced hypergrowth – particularly in 2023, with 8 million euros in turnover and the recruitment of around twenty employees – the year 2024 put an end to the expansion . “Our revenues decreased by 35% in 2024, a very significant drop. These departures were a very difficult, but necessary, decision,” explains the president of the association, Anaïs Terrien.
Behind this slowdown, Anaïs Terrien sees two structural trends. On the one hand, a threshold effect after “a first phase where we particularly affected companies that wanted to train their employees on these subjects”. On the other hand, “an economic and political context which puts ecology in the background and impacts the entire associative ecosystem». Two reasons which explain a certain disengagement of companies today.
A model sensitive to fluctuations
However, unlike other associations, La fresque du climat receives no subsidies and very few donations. This unusual operation in the sector is at the origin of its exponential growth, but it also makes its economic model more vulnerable to fluctuations. Its resources are based more than 60% on workshops and training sold to organizations, to which are added 26% from usage rights, paid by professional fresco artists. (read the benchmarks) and companies deploying the mural internally.
But was the fresco also a victim of its success? Since its invention, more than 160 frescoes have been developed by other structures, according to the site LesFresques.info which lists them: fresco of biodiversity, digital, new imaginations… The phenomenon testifies to a craze for this format, but it carries a risk of saturation of supply on the business side. “I think that frescoes sometimes come into competition with other workshops, observes Léna Trutt, professional animator. Especially since the climate is stressful, so people sometimes want something different. »
Added to this are questions surrounding the content of the fresco. Some criticize it for limiting itself to the technical aspects of climate change, abandoning, to remain neutral, its political and ideological reasons, such as the commodification of nature. Others would like it to focus more on solutions for action.
Expand the audience
In order to reach an audience more distant from climate issues, the team is seeking to adapt its workshop format. The association also wishes to cooperate with other ecological awareness workshops to “do not let these subjects take a back seat”says Anaïs Terrien. Finally, La fresque du climat is banking on its international development, where the game is still in full expansion phase and for which it spent 1.9 million euros in 2023-2024, according to its latest report of activity.
It remains to put this strategy into practice with significantly reduced staff numbers. In other words, “volunteers risk finding themselves with a heavier workload”, estimates Romain Avice, co-referent in Seine-Maritime. A veteran of the association sees it almost as a return to basics: fewer resources but a lot of commitment on the part of the volunteers.
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An association with a unique organization
Among the 90,000 leaders of La fresque du climat (including 60,000 in France), there are volunteers and professionals. In 2024, the association had 3,000 declared “pro fresco artists” in France – or 5% of the national community. “I’m proud that animators can make a living from it, it’s normal to earn money when you do things well,” assumes the creator of the fresco, Cédric Ringenbach, in the face of criticism over the monetization of the game. An animation is billed between €1,000 and €1,500, of which 10% is donated to the association in the form of usage rights.
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