Storytelling is an innate human need. It is how we make sense of our lives and plan out our futures. Yet too often the public is expected to engage with environmental topics like climate change in a way that runs counter to that inner narrative drive. Facts and graphs act as barriers rather than enablers to understanding. The vitally important story of climate change becomes a closed book, giving those with an interest in denying the science and its implications a space to operate unchallenged. Citizens become disillusioned and disenfranchised, unable to grapple with a problem that affects all our futures. To overcome these barriers to mutual understanding and positive engagement we propose a new model for public engagement that takes advantage of the story telling expertise of the arts, including theatre, fiction, poetry, music and visual media. Working collaboratively with communities and experts of many kinds we will unlock the creative potential within all of us to elaborate effective and empowering narratives of change and mutual understanding. To achieve such collaboration scientists will have to experience their own creative narrative of change. As outlined in the 2014 report from University College, London entitled "Time for Change" authored by project Co-I Prof. Chris Rapley, environmental scientists need to become proficient story tellers themselves if they are to become effective and powerful communicators. Our consortium brings together a group of expert practitioners across disciplinary boundaries with a proven track record of creative public engagement and outreach capabilities. We also contain the necessary research and evaluation skills needed to gather the evidence and assess the capabilities of the new model of engagement that we will co-develop with community groups. While our activities are Devon based, our consortium is well placed through its project partners to develop a wider programme of activities at a national level, thereby enabling the development of a subsequent proposal for the second stage of the Engaging Environments Call. Since storytelling skills are universal our model can equally well serve other contemporary environmental issues as well as climate change such as marine degradation or air pollution.