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Some Kind of Love Exhibition at Hatton Gallery

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Some Kind of Love Exhibition at Hatton Gallery

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A solo exhibition by award winning artist Uta Kögelsberger, investigating the complex relationships between human and ecological systems in a time of environmental change.

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Some Kind of Love: Actions and Reactions to Living on a Damaged Planet

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Award winning artist Uta Kögelsberger explores humanity’s relationship with nature.

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A free resource developed by Art Fund and digital agency Manifesto. How to reduce the carbon impact of our work online.

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How to take a low-carbon approach to your work online - Art Fund

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This downloadable resource is designed to help museum professionals consider the environmental impact of their digital activities.

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A helpful free resource for teams delivering workshops/public programmes.

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Elise Foster Vander Elst, the Design Museum

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This toolkit will help museum learning teams to reduce the environmental impact of learning, outreach and public programmes.

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GEM Environmental Responsibility Learning Course March 

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GEM Environmental Responsibility Learning Course March 

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This 3-week online course offers a combination of fundamental theory and practical case studies which will help you enhance your learning strategy, delivery and evaluation.

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ACE Culture, Climate & ER Annual Report 2024-25

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ACE Culture, Climate & ER Annual Report 2024-25

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This annual report created in partnership with ACE and Julie's Bicycle covers National Portfolio Organisations’ environmental data and their creative and inspirational responses to the climate crisis.

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Culture, Climate and Environmental Responsibility Report 2024/25

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Each year we team up with Julie’s Bicycle to produce our Environmental Responsibility Annual Report, which celebrates the successes of creative and cultural organisations in acting on national and international climate targets.

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Community Programme grant: Apply for £2,000 to transform urban spaces for people and wildlife. Applications now open! Apply by 3pm, 4 February 2026.

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Every year, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew supports people across the UK to connect with nature through Grow Wild grant programmes.

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The National Lottery Awards Environment Fund £300-20,000

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The National Lottery Awards Environment Fund £300-20,000

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Fund for community-led projects that improve the environment and help people connect with and enjoy nature where they live.

Funding projects that meet one of the following priorities:

help people connect with and care for nature in their area

make a positive difference to the environment

You can use the funding to:

start a new activity or continue an existing one

help your organisation adapt to new challenges

run one-off events that have a clear environmental benefit

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The climate and nature emergency affects us all, but local action can make a real difference. We fund community-led projects that improve the environment and help people connect with and enjoy nature where they live.

We fund projects that meet one of the following priorities:

help people connect with and care for nature in their area

make a positive difference to the environment

You can use the funding to:

start a new activity or continue an existing one

help your organisation adapt to new challenges

run one-off events that have a clear environmental benefit

This fund is open until 17 December 2025.

You cannot apply if you already have an Awards for All grant.

If you're looking for more general funding for community projects, go to the National Lottery Awards for All England page.

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National Lottery Awards for All England – Environment | The National Lottery Community Fund

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We fund community-led projects that tackle the climate and nature emergency, improve the environment, and help people connect with and enjoy nature locally.

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Find out what North East Museums did inspired by THE HERDS

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Inspired by THE HERDS | Great North Museum: Hancock

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Art and heritage at the heart of North East England

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THE HERDS public climate change artwork is brought to life for the children of Falmouth Primary Academy

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THE HERDS public climate change artwork is brought to life for the children of Falmouth Primary Academy

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Falmouth Art Gallery hosted a landmark community project as one of 44 community galleries and museums to bring public artwork THE HERDS to life for the children of Falmouth Primary Academy school. Find out what they did here

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Following a successful bid to Art Fund, Falmouth Art Gallery has hosted a landmark community project as one of 44 community galleries and museums to bring public artwork THE HERDS to life for the children of Falmouth Primary Academy school.

In April, ever-growing herds of life-size puppet animals began stampeding into cities across Africa and Europe to flee climate disaster in a public artwork on a scale never before attempted. Millions of people have followed THE HERDS online and via social media and participated in events and performances in person along the 20,000km route from the Congo Basin to the Arctic Circle.

As THE HERDS arrived in the UK in Manchester this past weekend, we're looking back at how we've brought the project to life right here in Falmouth through a series of inspiring and thought-provoking workshops which have deepened the children's connection with our collection of artwork and the natural world around them.

48 Year 3 and 4 children have explored the topic 'What makes the River Fal amazing?' through a special series of gallery and outreach visits, looking at the river's journey from source to sea, who lives in and from the river, why it is so polluted and what can be done to help.

All about the River Fal
The children were welcomed into the Gallery to watch the film 'FAL', all about the sights and sounds of the River Fal. Writing workshop facilitator Jo Lumber invited them to reflect on everything they saw and how important the river is.

The children also observed Italian artist Filippo Palizzi's 'After the Flood' painting which was on display in the Gallery and serves as a poignant reminder of the risks of climate change today.

Serving as inspiration for their very own poems, here some of the wonderful words written by Falmouth Primary Academy children.

Marvellous mask-making
Next up, local artist Sam Bradbury went into school and worked with the children to create their own masks inspired by THE HERDS. Class Teacher and Art Lead at Falmouth Primary Academy, Rebecca Van Vestraut, said: "Sam was great in the classroom when they were creating their masks, the children were engaged and focused throughout."

"I liked how we made the masks and it was really fun!!"

"I liked that we talked about animals and how we made masks"

Off to the Cirk-Hes
Partnering with Cornwall-based circus arts and physical theatre group Cirk Hes, the children then enjoyed a special visit to find out about environmental street performance. Rebecca Van Vestraut said: "They loved the performance part and some of the children who can struggle to focus in the classroom showed a different side during the circus skill- this was wonderful to see."

Sarah Scott, Access and Interpretation Manager at Falmouth Art Gallery, said: "It has been amazing to see the children's reaction to and engagement in this project over recent months. It is a great example of how important the arts can be in providing creative ways to explore challenging concepts and topics. As a Gallery at the heart of the local community which is rural and remote, it is important to us that we can make art accessible for all, and with the support of Art Fund to bring THE HERDS to Falmouth, that's exactly what we've been able to do."

"I like going on the stilts and on everything and I like all of it!"

"I liked the spinning plates"

"I liked the mermaid and I love the skills that I thought I couldn't do! And it was fun, I hope you come back"

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THE HERDS public climate change artwork is brought to life for the children of Falmouth Primary Academy - Falmouth Town Council

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Following a successful bid to Art Fund, Falmouth Art Gallery has hosted a landmark community project as one of 44 community galleries and museums to bring public artwork THE HERDS to life for the children of Falmouth Primary Academy school. In April, ever-growing herds of life-size puppet animals began stampeding into cities across Africa and [...]

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Talking Nature: How Museums are Engaging with the Environment

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Talking Nature: How Museums are Engaging with the Environment

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In October 2024 MD South West awarded seven Talking Nature grants to support museum partnerships with local schools, using natural science collections to explore the natural world and climate crisis. Halfway through their projects, they share their learning so far.

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Talking Nature: How Museums are Engaging with the Environment - Museum Development South West

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In October 2024 we awarded seven Talking Nature grants to support museum partnerships with local schools, using natural science collections to explore the natural world and climate crisis. These grants were created after the success of The Wild Escape grant scheme, in partnership with ArtFund, in 2023. The museums received up to £5,000 each for […]

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Sustainability leadership and climate action plans in education

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Sustainability leadership and climate action plans in education

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The Department for Education's (DfE) sustainability leadership and climate action plans initiative. Here’s the Department for Education's sustainability leadership and climate action plans page which states the requirement for environmental leads by 2025 as part of the sustainability and climate change strategy

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Overview

A key initiative of DfE's sustainability and climate change strategy for education is 'sustainability leadership and climate action plans'.

The strategy states: "By 2025, all education settings will have nominated a sustainability lead and put in place a climate action plan". This includes early years settings, schools, multi-academy trusts, colleges, and universities.

Sustainability leadership could be a group of people or an individual responsible for the development and implementation of a climate action plan.

A climate action plan is a detailed plan to enable your education setting, or trust, to progress or commence sustainability initiatives.

There are many organisations providing courses, products, and services to support an education setting's approach to climate change. There are also many examples of excellent practice when it comes to sustainability and climate change in the education sector, and your individual setting or trust may already have a plan in place. Where this is the case we are not suggesting that you create a new plan, but you may find that some of the non-statutory guidance below supplements what you are already doing.

We want to help every setting engage with the support it needs. From December 2023 we will begin to roll out a free programme of support including:

a digital hub of resources, best practice, and tools which will help you develop, or build on, your climate action plan

access to a network of regional coordinators who will provide local expert support and peer to peer learning opportunities

Why this is important

Our engagement has highlighted that settings and trusts have the greatest success in driving change where there is a holistic action plan that is supported by a leadership team with the authority, knowledge, and commitment to take it forward.

Ensuring you have clear leadership for sustainability in place, and a climate action plan, will help your setting to:

increase the confidence and expertise of your leadership team, staff, learners, and students in understanding climate change and how positive change can be achieved

create a culture that prioritises sustainability

share effective practice with other education settings and develop a peer-to-peer learning network

use data to identify and prioritise action

improve energy and water efficiency

calculate your carbon emissions and identify ways to reduce them

reduce operating costs

increase resilience and start adapting to the impacts of climate change

enhance biodiversity

help learners develop skills and knowledge which help them to contribute to sustainability and climate change in their lives and future jobs

Identifying your sustainability leadership structure

Though it is up to each individual setting or trust to decide the structure of their sustainability leadership team, best practice shows that change is delivered when driven by a diverse team of passionate individuals. It is important that both educational (for example, teaching staff) and operational (for example, estates management) expertise is brought to this team.

The presence of senior leaders from your organisation is critical for planning and implementation to be successful. They have the authority, capacity, and support to influence and lead strategic change within the setting.

You may choose to take an individual setting approach to building sustainability leadership, set it up across a multi-academy trust (if your setting is a member of one), or both.

A whole-setting approach

It is important that the whole education setting, or trust, is engaged so that planning becomes action.

Learners

Involving children, young people and learners is important in climate action planning.

Doing so can:

inspire their enthusiasm to help drive positive change

increase their practical knowledge of sustainability and climate change

give young people a sense of agency where anxiety stems from climate concerns

create a sense of pride in their education setting

enable them to share their knowledge and enthusiasm in their local communities

enable them to engage their parents, carers, and wider community in sustainability and climate change

Senior leadership team (SLT), governors, trustees and executive leaders

As senior decision makers, SLT and governors should support and drive your sustainable activity. They should:

provide the authority and support to drive and embed culture change

ensure climate change and sustainability feature on the agenda at key meetings

be responsible for succession planning, so that commitment to sustainability endures in the setting

Estates management

It is important your estates manager or management team inform your plan as they will have the knowledge required to enact more sustainable practices.

The performance management and sustainability section of the good estate management for schools guidance explains the role of estates management in encouraging sustainability and managing energy and water use.

For settings in further and higher education, a sector specific methodology for calculating carbon emissions, based on the greenhouse gas protocol, has been published by EAUC - the Alliance for Sustainability Leadership in Education. This follows collaboration with participants of the Platinum Jubilee Challenge, the Royal Anniversary Trust, the Association of Colleges, Colleges Scotland and Universities UK.

The standardised carbon emissions framework for further and higher education aims to:

give confidence to institutions who want to start monitoring

ensure transparency and comparability between institutions who report their emissions

Climate action plans

Creating a climate action plan will allow you to take a structured and strategic route toward ensuring your setting or trust is acting toward, and educating about, sustainability. You may choose to have a climate action plan that sits within an individual setting, or across a trust, or both.

A climate action plan should typically cover the following 4 areas, to align with DfE's sustainability and climate change strategy:

decarbonisation, for example calculating and taking actions to reduce carbon emissions, such as becoming more energy efficient

adaptation and resilience, such as taking actions to reduce the risk of flooding and overheating

biodiversity, for example engaging with the National Education Nature Park and enrolling in the Climate Action Award

climate education and green careers, such as ensuring the education you provide gives knowledge-rich and comprehensive teaching about climate change, and that your teaching staff and lecturers feel supported to offer this

What is needed if you have already started

Your setting or trust may already have an environmental plan or sustainability strategy in place and may already be calculating its emissions. Equally you may also be working with one of the many excellent organisations who help education settings address sustainability.

Our approach is not designed to duplicate planning and action that has already taken place. We recognise that different settings are at different stages of this journey. That is why the further support set out below is designed to ensure that settings are supported with further and complimentary information, regardless of where they are currently at in their journey.

Further detail about support to come

From December 2023, we will begin to roll out a programme of further support for the education sector. We will provide access to:

a sustainability leadership digital hub which will signpost to training, guidance and support offered by quality assured organisations working in this space depending on what your setting needs and already has in place. Settings who require this specific training will be able to access carbon literacy training via this hub

a network of local experts and peer to peer support that can assist you in establishing your sustainability leadership structure and develop and implement your action plan

In the sustainability and climate change strategy published in April 2022, we committed to "rolling out carbon literacy training to all settings". Having carried out user research and policy development since that date, we understand that each setting will have different support requirements and a single training offer would not be appropriate. We will provide support through the approach set out above, reflecting the different needs of each setting. The digital hub will signpost to carbon literacy training for all those that need it.

How to get started (if you have not already)

The following contains links, organised by sector, to demonstrate how some education settings have started this journey and to highlight some of the tools already available to settings. This is just a small selection of examples. There are many more settings also doing excellent work on this.

All settings

Early years settings

Schools

Multi-academy trusts

Further education settings

Higher education settings

We are collecting case studies for use in communications and guidance as we further develop our support.

If you would like to share your experience with others, please send a live website link to your sustainability strategy or send a written submission to DfE's Sustainability and Climate Change Unit: dfe.sustainability@education.gov.uk

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Sustainability leadership and climate action plans in education

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The Department for Education's (DfE) sustainability leadership and climate action plans initiative.

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Climate Ambassadors: Turning Climate Ambition into Climate Action in Education 

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Climate Ambassadors: Turning Climate Ambition into Climate Action in Education 

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Climate Ambassadors: Turning Climate Ambition into Climate Action in Education We match volunteer climate experts with education settings to develop climate action plans in nurseries, schools and colleges.

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The Climate Ambassadors consortium works to help education settings in the UK take action to become more environmentally sustainable and climate resilient.

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Artist-in-residence at King's College looking at different perspectives on climate change

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Artist-in-residence at King's College looking at different perspectives on climate change

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"Marcus will work with world experts with widely different perspectives to investigate our complicity in the earth crisis, as well as scrutinizing the cultural forces, the ideologies, values, and myths that shape our behaviour. His work will foreground those whose lives have been shaped by climate impacts – from small island nations threatened by rising seas to the farmers of the Fens facing unprecedented threats due to climate change – as well as those resolutely in denial of the crisis."

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New artist-in-residence to explore and challenge human ideas of climate crisis

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In a new and ambitious project, currently titled “A Normal Life”, artist Marcus Coates has joined King’s College as its artist in residence. Developed in collaboration with King’s, “A Normal Life” will put him – and by default us, as individuals – under the spotlight. The multi-faceted project will engage with, and be shaped by, world-leading scholars and business leaders, the community of King’s and the city of Cambridge.The experience of living through today’s unfolding and deepening permacrisis poses profound and urgent questions to and of society, individual citizens, institutions and world leaders. Questions like “Who is accountable?” and “Who is responsible?” resonate ever more sharply as we call ourselves and others to account for bringing our people and our planet to the edge of the precipice. Contemporary artists, working at a distance from formal structures of power, are uniquely positioned to ask such difficult questions.Marcus Coates is known for his sustained commitment to working at the intersection between nature and culture, and between art and science. Marcus makes films that address humanity and the natural world and explore the connections between them, working with drama and in collaboration. His 2022 series of films, entitled “The Directors” and produced by Artangel, has been widely acclaimed for its powerful and sensitive exploration of psychosis.“The generous spirit of cross-disciplinary interaction which is at the core of the College has been a revelation to me. A place steeped in the past but profoundly rooted in the questions of today and the future,” commented Marcus. “My research for A Normal Life is informed by a range of disciplines from neuroscience, medieval English literature, history of law, evolutionary biology, politics and more.” “It’s been remarkable and a great privilege being part of an ethos that celebrates thought and creates space for the imagination. Marcus CoatesMarcus will work with world experts with widely different perspectives to investigate our complicity in the earth crisis, as well as scrutinizing the cultural forces, the ideologies, values, and myths that shape our behaviour. His work will foreground those whose lives have been shaped by climate impacts – from small island nations threatened by rising seas to the farmers of the Fens facing unprecedented threats due to climate change – as well as those resolutely in denial of the crisis.The project is co-curated by Clare Cumberlidge and Frances Morris (KC 1978) CBE, King’s College alumna and Honorary Fellow. “Marcus has received an incredible welcome from the staff and students at King’s, a community which offers a near-perfect environment in which to develop and test his ambitious new project which focuses on personal responsibility in the era of climate emergency,” said Frances Morris. “Internationally renowned for its scholarship across the humanities and sciences, King’s has a long track record of independent thought, challenging tradition and embracing cross-disciplinary innovation. Marcus’s residency is generating multiple opportunities for research, reflection and imaginative collaboration with analytical and creative thinkers from across the College community.”Marcus and the project team will organise a series of workshops and other opportunities for engagement across the College community in 2026.

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The Exhibitions Group  - Rethinking Touring Exhibitions Toolkit

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The Exhibitions Group  - Rethinking Touring Exhibitions Toolkit

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The Exhibitions Group - Rethinking Touring Exhibitions Toolkit

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A tool to help reduce the environmental impact of touring exhibitions

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Ikon Gallery - modular exhibition furniture 

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Ikon Gallery - modular exhibition furniture 

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Ikon gallery have done a lot of work on modular exhibition furniture for temporary exhibitions and reducing waste

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From Coal to Climate Change - Museums Galleries Scotland

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From Coal to Climate Change - Museums Galleries Scotland

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Summerlee Museum is a museum of industrial and social history which tells the story of Coatbridge and its iron industry during the Industrial Revolution.

During From Coal to Climate Change we created a school workshop and accompanying guided tour of the museum and site which aims to enable visitors to make links between the climate crisis and the history of their community.

Funding from the Museums Galleries Scotland COP Conversations Fund (2021) was used to resource a new school workshop. In this two-part workshop pupils learn about the iron and coal industries in Coatbridge and how they have contributed to climate change through carbon emissions. They also learn about how we can reduce our emissions through non-polluting energy sources.

The header image on this page shows the Gartsherrie Ironworks in Coatbridge. Gartsherrie ran 16 blast furnaces, making it one of the largest ironworks in Europe at the time.

The painting is by C.R. Stanley, an English landscape painter who painted the ironworks whilst on a painting tour of Scotland in 1853. The painting was used in this project to make explicit the link between climate change, a contemporary issue, and Scotland's industrial heritage. The painting clearly shows pollution from the ironworks and so helps visitors make the link between Victorian industry and the greenhouse effect.

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From Coal to Climate Change - Museums Galleries Scotland

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Summerlee Museum is a museum of industrial and social history which tells the story of Coatbridge and its iron industry during the Industrial Revolution. During From Coal to Climate Change we created a school workshop and accompanying guided tour of the museum and site which aims to enable visitors to make links between the climate crisis and the history of their community.

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Sustainability at the Brunel Museum - Brunel Museum

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We are a small museum, but we have big aspirations. We have already made changes to how we operate to become more sustainable. We are continuing to investigate ways to further minimise our impact and make the best choices that contribute to the global transition to a net-zero carbon society. We aspire to bring sustainable …

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Taking a long view on the climate crisis at Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens

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Taking a long view on the climate crisis at Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens

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MDN hosted a talk from Sunderland Culture on how they’ve been working with a freelancer Justine Boussard to address this work with young voices: Follow link to get an overview of work they are doing to explore how Long Time thinking and object-based storytelling can unlock the power of permanent collections to address the planetary emergency. Past event listing which includes various links for you to find out more.

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Elevenses, Monday 24 November, Taking a long view on the climate crisis at Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens – Museum Development North

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Museum Development North enables strong, agile museums to contribute to the distinctive life, culture and identity of the North of England.

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Green Tourism | Stratford-on-Avon District Council

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Sustainability at the Juno Beach Centre - great case study

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Sustainability at the Juno Beach Centre - great case study

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The museum committed to 'memory and sustainable development' - 'today the fight to be waged is the climate emergency'. Animation and overview of their sustainability approach, with breakdown by Sustainable Development Goal. Includes info on smaller measures taken towards achieving carbon neutrality and bigger restructuring efforts as they work towards becoming a sustainable tourist destination (includes everything from visitor travel and waste management to biodiversity and retail.)

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Sustainable Development : Juno Beach Centre

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Shakespeare Birthplace trust - becoming sustainable (incl Estates team e-cargo bike)

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Shakespeare Birthplace trust - becoming sustainable (incl Estates team e-cargo bike)

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Find out more about the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and how we’re becoming more sustainable to meet our goal of carbon net zero.

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Brunel Museum gives staff 2 low carbon travel days for holidays 

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Brunel Museum gives staff 2 low carbon travel days for holidays 

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Brunel Museum has become the first museum to sign up to the sustainable travel employee benefits scheme Climate Perks. Employees are entitled to at least two paid “journey days” on top of their annual leave so they can take low carbon transport options over flights.

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Brunel Museum becomes first museum to join Climate Perks scheme - Brunel Museum

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Brunel Museum has become the first museum to sign up to the sustainable travel employee benefits scheme Climate Perks. Climate Perks allows employers to give employees paid “journey days” which they can use to subsidise their annual leave to take low-carbon transport modes to their holiday destinations. Just 15% of people take 70% of all …

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Good Journey incentives scheme is one to explore if you are looking at promoting green travel to your venue

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Water Literacy | Train to Become Water Literate

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Water Literacy offer accredited learning programs helping to address to inspire, motivate and educate professionals to play their part in addressing the environmental impact of water scarcity in the UK.

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* BOOK NOW*  Seeds for Action: In Focus - Dilemmas and Decisions for Environmentally Responsible Digital Collections

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* BOOK NOW*  Seeds for Action: In Focus - Dilemmas and Decisions for Environmentally Responsible Digital Collections

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This session is for you if you are interested in:

Understanding the issues and challenges around the carbon footprint of the born-digital assets in your collections

Making informed decisions around managing your existing digital assets

Exploring practical steps you can take now to form new behaviours

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Seeds for Action: In Focus – Dilemmas and Decisions for Environmentally Responsible Digital Collections – Museum Development North

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Museum Development North enables strong, agile museums to contribute to the distinctive life, culture and identity of the North of England.

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Historic England: Developing a Decarbonisation Plan Template, Case Studies & Resources

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Historic England: Developing a Decarbonisation Plan Template, Case Studies & Resources

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These news resources support cultural and heritage organisations responsible for historic buildings to navigate the processes and steps involved in decarbonising their buildings to meet their net zero targets. The resources set out on these pages have been produced as a result of the Cultural and Heritage Sector Decarbonisation Project, managed by the architects Haworth Tompkins, funded by and working closely in partnership with Arts Council England (ACE) and Historic England (HE).

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Historic England: How to Write a Carbon Reduction Plan Workshops

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Historic England: How to Write a Carbon Reduction Plan Workshops

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How to Write a Carbon Reduction Plan has been designed to support organisations to build on their carbon footprint report to write a basic plan for carbon reduction whilst also engaging with staff, volunteers and visitors.

This 2-hour online trainer led session covers the following:-

Decide on your organisations carbon reduction priorities

Plan your carbon reduction actions

Embed within your organisation

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How to Write a Carbon Reduction Plan Workshop

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The How to Write a Carbon Reduction Plan Workshop has been designed to allow organisations to build on their Carbon Footprint Report to write a…

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Quick-start guide: how to talk about different issues, including net zero and climate adaptation.

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Communications toolkit. Quick-start guide: how to talk about different issues, including net zero and climate adaptation.

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“From Paris to Belém : 10 years of global climate action”, the exhibition celebrating 10 years of COP21 - some photos at links below showing snap I took of interactives around the carbon footprint of food and  travel, and a video of the immersive forest area. 

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From Paris to Belém : 10 years of global climate action”, the exhibition celebrating 10 years of COP21

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From Paris to Belém : 10 years of global climate action”, the exhibition celebrating 10 years of COP21

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https://share.icloud.com/photos/05f5GFCH8K8pKrlMoc8sJf4Vw

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“From Paris to Belém : 10 years of global climate action”, the exhibition celebrating 10 years of COP21

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In 2015, the adoption of the Paris Agreement at COP21 marked a decisive turning point in the global commitment to the climate. To celebrate this anniversary with as many people as possible, the City of Paris is organizing large-scale events, including the exhibition “From Paris to Belém : 10 years of global climate action” which will be held at Hôtel de Ville from June 21 to December 13, 2025.

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Installing Heat Pumps in Historic Buildings: a really helpful resource from Historic England which gives a comprehensive introduction to the topic.

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Installing Heat Pumps in Historic Buildings | Historic England

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Advice on installing air, ground and water source heat pumps in historic buildings.

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St. Barbe exhibition: The Life of the Field

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St. Barbe exhibition: The Life of the Field

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Discover how artists have captured the heart of the countryside and the forces that have shaped it over more than a century. Aligned to exhibition is a new events programme: Climate Chats, with the first focus being Farming and the Soil

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The Herds: Guide to Rethinking Environmental Responsibility in Public Programmes 

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The Herds: Guide to Rethinking Environmental Responsibility in Public Programmes 

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This downloadable toolkit provides practical tips and guidance on including your colleagues, collaborators and audiences in these conversations and selecting materials with a lower environmental impact.

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This toolkit will help museum learning teams to reduce the environmental impact of learning, outreach and public programmes.

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Linnean Society Local Nature Grant Scheme

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Linnean Society Local Nature Grant Scheme

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Up to £1000 for youth-led local nature activity

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Grants for youth-led projects in the UK, aiming to empower young people to enact the changes they want to see, increasing access to local natural spaces, and improving understanding of their local biodiversity

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This environmental plan template has been created as a guide to help you write your museum’s environmental plan. It should be used after you have assessed your current situation and gathered your data.

The template allows for the different needs and requirements of museums and is designed for you to tailor it to create an environmental plan suitable for your museum. You need only complete those sections which are appropriate to your circumstances in as much, or as little, detail as you like, and you can add sections as necessary.

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MDSE Environmental Plan Template – Museum Development South East

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This environmental plan template has been created as a guide to help you write your museum’s environmental plan. It should be used after you have assessed your current situation and gathered your data.

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Watch: Seeds for Action - In Focus Lightning Talk Playlist

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Watch: Seeds for Action - In Focus Lightning Talk Playlist

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Seeds for Action: In Focus Lightning Talks

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Seeds for Action: In Focus is a series of thematic workshops focusing on how museums can build connections to support climate work. Seeds for Action forms pa…

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Art Fund The Herds: Low-Carbon Approach to Online Working

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Art Fund The Herds: Low-Carbon Approach to Online Working

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This downloadable resource is designed to help museum professionals consider the environmental impact of their digital activities.

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How to take a low-carbon approach to your work online - Art Fund

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This downloadable resource is designed to help museum professionals consider the environmental impact of their digital activities.

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Guidance on looking after historic buildings and sites, including climate change adaptation, retrofit and energy efficiency advice; plus briefing on recording, and information and project management.

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See our guidance on conserving buildings, making historic places accessible for disabled people, dealing with flooding and surveying.

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A new programme to support museums in North with tackling climate related environmental issues affecting buildings and collections

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Future Preparedness Programme: Climate-Related Environmental Management – Museum Development North

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Museum Development North enables strong, agile museums to contribute to the distinctive life, culture and identity of the North of England.

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The Energy Resilience Fund (ERF) provides a blended funding package of loan (60%) and grant (40%) to bolster the energy resilience of eligible charities and social enterprises in England.

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Energy Resilience Fund - Social Investment Business

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The Energy Resilience Fund (ERF) provides a blended funding package of loan (60%) and grant (40%) to bolster the energy resilience of eligible charities and social enterprises in England.

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Asda Foundation: Local Community Spaces Fund

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Asda Foundation: Local Community Spaces Fund

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Asda Foundation: Local Community Spaces Fund.

Grants from £10,000 – £20,000

The application window for this grant will close Wednesday 28th May 2025, 10am.

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All criteria below must be met in order to be eligible to apply and to be considered for this grant.

Groups must have:
A total annual income of £250,000 or below, and unrestricted reserves of no more than £40,000

What we need:

Your most recent 2 full years of annual accounts. We are unable to accept applications from organisations who can't provide this.

If your group is a branch or project of a parent organisation with an income over £250,000, you must show a separate bank account, independent annual accounts, and your own constitution to be eligible.

Why we need it:
Asda Foundation prioritises supporting grassroots organisations, and the limits ensure our funding supports these grassroots groups. Your income and reserves will be assessed as part of the review process.

Governing documents

What we need:
A finalised copy of your organisation's Constitution (or Articles of Association/Memorandum, if applicable), outlining your group's name, charitable aims, non-profit status, and asset distribution upon dissolution.

Why we need it:

A Safeguarding Policy

What we need:
An up-to-date Safeguarding policy specific to the age group/s of your service users. See our safeguarding guidelines here. If you support children and adults you will need to provide both policies.

Why we need it:
To ensure the protection of service users and understand your processes for handling concerns.

A bank account in your group's name that accepts cheques Permission to carry out the proposed work

What we need:
A bank statement showing the most recent 3 months of transactions and which clearly shows your group's payee name. Ensure your bank accepts cheques before applying.

Why we need it:
To demonstrate a good cashflow and financial stability. We can only pay by cheque, made payable to your group (not individuals or personal accounts).

What we need:

Proof of ownership or a lease with at least 5 years remaining.

If leased, we'll need a letter showing you have permission from the building owner/landlord to carry out the work.

If your project includes significant structural alteration you will need to show you have requested planning permission.

Why we need it:
We ask for these documents to ensure your project has a strong foundation and long-term impact which will benefit the community for years to come. It is essential that we can determine that everything is legally compliant and can go ahead as planned.

Detailed Project Costs
In your application, you'll need to be able to show:

In your application, please provide a detailed breakdown of the total costs associated with your project, highlighting specifically how Asda Foundation funding will be used. This may include information about any other sources of funding, such as additional funders, fundraising efforts, or use of reserves.

This information is essential to help us fully understand your project and assess how our support will contribute to its success. You will also have the option to add quotes or estimates detailing the cost of the work to be completed - though these are not mandatory.
Fundraising of 10% of the total project cost
As a reminder Asda Foundation must be contributing to at least 50% of the total project cost, up to a maximum of £20,000. (minimum grant: £10,000).

You must already have 10% of the total project cost and this must be evident on the accounts or bank statements you provide during the application process. You can continue to fundraise towards any shortfall in project costs and if you have plans in place to do this, please outline in the application. This is needed to demonstrate financial stability.

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Local Community Spaces Fund | Asda Foundation

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Supporting grassroots community groups to transform spaces at the heart of their local community

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Woodland Trust free trees for communities and schools

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Woodland Trust free trees for communities and schools

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Woodland Trust want to make sure everybody in the UK has the chance to plant a tree. So they're giving away hundreds of thousands of trees to schools and communities. Applications now open for November deliveries.

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We’re giving away hundreds of thousands of trees

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Carbon Ruins project- Manchester Museum resources

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Carbon Ruins project- Manchester Museum resources

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Carbon Ruins is an exhibition, set in the year 2050 when we have reached zero carbon. The idea is to select an object from today that would be displayed in the Carbon Ruins exhibition; representing the change that must have happened to reach net zero. We are excited to share this idea with schools, and have put together some resources to support you to take part in Carbon Ruins, Manchester.

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Digital Emissions Impact Board for MS365

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Digital Emissions Impact Board for MS365

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Calculate emissions from your usage of Microsoft 365 with the Emissions Impact Dashboard for Microsoft 365.

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Connect to the Emissions Impact Dashboard for Microsoft 365 - Power BI

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The Emissions Impact Dashboard for Microsoft 365 for Power BI enables you to calculate your cloud-based emissions generated by your usage of Azure and Microsoft Dynamics. This document shows you how to connect to the Emissions Impact Dashboard for Microsoft 365.

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Planet Ocean exhibiton - The Box Plymouth

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Planet Ocean exhibiton - The Box Plymouth

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Exhibiton and public programme drawing on lots of partnerships and research to help connect people to the sea, so they care about the sea. Lovely ideas including asking people to write a Letter to the Sea and a Teaspoon of Plankton installation where people can draw their own plankton which gets added to a big digital projection. Meet the Scientist events.

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Plymouth is ‘Britain’s Ocean City’, where our story is woven into the world’s interconnected seas. Come and immerse yourselves in an exhibition that explores the powerful relationship between humanity and our oceans, past and present.

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Glasgow Women's Library Net-Zero Handbook

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Glasgow Women's Library Net-Zero Handbook

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Net-Zero Handbook | Glasgow Women's Library

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We're delighted to be launching our Net-Zero Handbook, a practical plan setting out the changes we will make to our building to reach "operational net zero" by 2030.

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Museums, Climate Change and Representation

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Museums, Climate Change and Representation

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Podcast with Suzanne Dhaliwal, a leading climate justice creative and strategist, exploring the evolving role of museums in addressing the climate crisis. Suzanne shares insights on how museums can authentically center Indigenous, Black, and POC voices, foster creative collaborations, and navigate ethical challenges around funding.

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Podcast Museums and Chill - Museums, Climate Change and Representation - International Council of Museums

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We are excited to share the latest episode of the Museums and Chill podcast , where we talk about Sustainable Development in Museums with the team behind the ICOM Award.

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A one-of-a-kind stand-up comedy night inspired by the new exhibition Steam to Green: A North East Energy Revolution.

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A one-of-a-kind comedy night in the Great Hall inspired by the Steam to Green: A North East Energy Revolution exhibition

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Collecting Environmental Change: Case Studies from Scotland and Europe

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Collecting Environmental Change: Case Studies from Scotland and Europe

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This symposium explores how museums are collecting objects that represent the impact of and response to environmental change.

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Collecting Environmental Change: Case Studies from Scotland and Europe - Museums Galleries Scotland

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This symposium explores how museums are collecting objects that represent the impact of and response to environmental change.

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Julie's Bicycle Building Resilience online session 29.01.25

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Julie's Bicycle Building Resilience online session 29.01.25

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Online session. How can we prepare our venues, museums, and heritage sites for the challenges posed by climate change?

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How can we prepare our venues, museums, and heritage sites for the challenges posed by climate change? As climate change intensifies, cultural buildings An event exploring how can we prepare our venues, museums, and heritage sites for the challenges posed by climate change

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The Herds - Art Fund £ for programming activities

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The Herds - Art Fund £ for programming activities

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THE HERDS is public art and climate action on a vast scale – an ambitious coming together of culture and climate to inspire action and reignite our connection with the natural world. Art Fund is offering grants to enable museums, galleries and cultural organisations to programme activities inspired by THE HERDS, a new project from The Walk Productions, creators of the extraordinary journeys of Little Amal.  Deadline 20 January:   https://www.artfund.org/professional/get-funding/programmes/the-herds

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Art Fund is offering grants to enable museums, galleries and cultural organisations to programme activities inspired by THE HERDS.

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Across the country, individuals, communities, organisations, and businesses are getting on with building a future that is better for the environment and for society. For change to happen, we must be able to grasp these stories of the transition in action. We need to see that it is everyday people who are shaping and driving a different future.

At the Local Storytelling Exchange, we find these stories and shine a spotlight on them, sharing them widely across local, regional, and national media, digital channels and offline events to show “this is what the transition looks like”.

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Please enable Javascript - You will need to enable Javascript in your browser settings to use this website!

We find the stories

Across Britain individuals, communities and businesses are building a greener, cleaner world. But too often their stories go unheard. We change this.

We spread the word

Our experienced journalists reach beyond the usual suspects, connecting across local media to tell everyday stories of extraordinary change.

We make an impact

Change is here and it's being led by people. Making local action visible drives the demand for a more sustainable future.

Our Stories

From cycling GPs and eco churches to the miner's son running the world's largest offshore wind farm, our diverse and powerful stories highlight the people behind the green transition

Depot reopens as 'low carbon' site following £8m refit

A Durham County council storage unit is now clean-energy self-sufficient after an £8m refit.

How Cornish farms are innovating in bid to reach net zero

A deep dive/ explainer article looking at net zero farming techniques featuring LSE contacts

Our work has led to...

stories

sourced and developed

media organisations

engaged with

Do you have a story?

If you have a story of the green transition, why not see if we can help?
Get in touch

Are you looking for a story?

If you are a journalist looking for a story we're always happy to hear from you.
Get in touch

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Local Storytelling Exchange | This is what the green transition looks like

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This is what the green transition looks like

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2,000 Swiss women sued their government over climate change – and won

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2,000 Swiss women sued their government over climate change – and won

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The power of people to make change happen...

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Swiss women win landmark climate case against Switzerland government

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A landmark ruling in favor of Swiss women against the government over climate inaction is expected to have a significant impact beyond Switzerland. Here’s more.

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Bees: NML exhibition and touring opportunity

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Bees: NML exhibition and touring opportunity

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Bees: a story of survival.

Currently on display at the World Museum, National Museums Liverpool.

Touring exhibition available from 2025.

Bees: A Story of Survival was designed and produced by Wolfgang Buttress Studio and developed in collaboration with National Museums Liverpool.

Please contact Andrew Bullock, Head of Touring Exhibitions, for details.
Email: Andrew.Bullock@liverpoolmuseums.org.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 07774586365

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Immerse yourself in an exhibition that brings together art and science to explore one of nature’s most incredible creatures - the bee.This exhibition is a story of 120 million years of adaptation and survival. Bees have lived on the planet since the time of the dinosaurs. They are vital to our survival, but changes to the environment and climate mean their existence is under threat.

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The Impact of Roots & Branches 2021-24 Highlights Report

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The Impact of Roots & Branches 2021-24 Highlights Report

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Roots & Branches is a collaborative project between The Carbon Literacy Project, Museum Development England and Manchester Museum. It empowered and inspired the Museum sector to undertake environmental action through a programme of Carbon Literacy training, targeted support, and the development of an innovative Top Floor climate hub and public programme at Manchester Museum.

Download the report to find out more about the project and its impacts from June 2021 to March 2024.

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Hybrid Futures, a multi-part collaboration focusing on climate, sustainability, collaborative learning and co-production between Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, Touchstones Rochdale, University of Salford Art Collection and Shezad Dawood Studio, and generously supported by Arts Council England and Art Fund with additional funding from Henry Moore Foundation.

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Welcome to the Future!

Castlefield Gallery Manchester, Grundy Art Gallery Blackpool, Touchstones Rochdale, University of Salford Art Collection and Shezad Dawood Studio are working in partnership on a pilot project that they believe will make a difference to the way that they operate. Hybrid Futures is exploring collective and more sustainable ways of working that will influence how the partnership commissions, exhibits and collects new work by visual artists to benefit and be more relevant to their audiences, now and in the future.

A series of exhibitions across the North West of England features new work and commissions by artists Shezad Dawood, Jessica El Mal, Parham Ghalamdar and RA Walden that address the urgent thematic focus of climate change.

The partnership is working with a group of people from their local communities with a shared concern about the climate crisis. This group called Collective Futures, is exploring how creative production can help to shine a light on these issues and create solutions to the problems caused by the changing global environment.

Hybrid Futures, a multi-part collaboration focusing on climate, sustainability, collaborative learning and co-production between Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, Touchstones Rochdale, University of Salford Art Collection and Shezad Dawood Studio, and generously supported by Arts Council England and Art Fund with additional funding from Henry Moore Foundation.

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Hybrid Futures is a multi-part collaboration focusing on climate, sustainability, collaborative learning and co-production...

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Impacts, vulnerability understanding risks from climate change to culture and heritage

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Impacts, vulnerability understanding risks from climate change to culture and heritage

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A publication which would be good to read when thinking about future preparedness of museums and heritage sites.

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ICSM CHC White Paper II: Impacts, vulnerability, and understanding risks of climate change for culture and heritage: Contribution of Impacts Group II to the International CoSponsored Meeting on Culture, Heritage and Climate Change - UCL Discovery

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UCL Discovery is UCL’s open access repository, showcasing and providing access to UCL research outputs from all UCL disciplines.

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Museums Association - online event 4 Dec - Take Care: Putting Collections at the Heart of Climate Change Work

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Museums Association - online event 4 Dec - Take Care: Putting Collections at the Heart of Climate Change Work

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Take Care: Putting Collections at the Heart of Climate Change Work - Museums Association

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Image: National Museums Scotland The Museums Associations believes that all museums can take action on climate justice by doing three …

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This company is based in the Lake District.

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Sustainably rent a pot grown tree for the Christmas period

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Panorama- Can Scientists Save the World?

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Panorama- Can Scientists Save the World?

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Programme looking at carbon capture

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BBC One - Panorama, Can Scientists Save the World?

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Can the ingenuity of scientists save the world from the consequences of climate change?

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Elevenses: BioBlitz - making the most of your green spaces - 17 Dec

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Elevenses: BioBlitz - making the most of your green spaces - 17 Dec

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Elevenses, Tuesday 17 December, BioBlitz Events – Making the Most of Your Green Spaces – Museum Development North

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Museum Development North enables strong, agile museums to contribute to the distinctive life, culture and identity of the North of England.

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From ‘Climate’ to ‘Healthy People and Planet’: Updating our CHWA Award categories | CHWA

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“We have no land, we are the land. We have no sea, we are the sea.”Günther Baechler – Toda Peace Institute

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Elevenses: Emergency Preparedness findings - 11 Dec 2024

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Elevenses: Emergency Preparedness findings - 11 Dec 2024

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Elevenses 1 hour online session on 11 December on Emergency Preparedness findings: all welcome, no booking required

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Elevenses, Wednesday 11 December, Key Findings and Recommendations relating to Emergency Preparedness – Museum Development North

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Museum Development North enables strong, agile museums to contribute to the distinctive life, culture and identity of the North of England.

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ARA Environmental Sustainability Group Case Studies — Archives & Records Association

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Archives & Records Association sustainability case studies

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Archives & Records Association sustainability case studies

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ARA Environmental Sustainability Group Case Studies — Archives & Records Association

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The theme of our 2024 Conference, starting today, is ‘Climate and Crisis: Tackling It Together’  and over the next three days we hope to address the major crises and challenges facing our communities and our profession, learning from our community and building stronger responses, together.

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Julie's Bicycle: Buildings Net Zero Energy Resources

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Buildings Net Zero Energy Resources | Julie’s Bicycle | Culture & Climate Non-Profit Network

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Free resources to decarbonise for buildings-based organisations

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Seeds for Action: Connect & Co-Work - every other month

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Seeds for Action: Connect & Co-Work - every other month

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20 January 2026 10.00-11.30

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Seeds for Action Programme: Connect & Co-Work Sessions – Museum Development North

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Museum Development North enables strong, agile museums to contribute to the distinctive life, culture and identity of the North of England.

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The new GCC carbon calculator is here!! Suitable for museums and galleries, exhibitions, displays and tours, please do check it out. Free to use, sign up required. Visit their website for details on training sessions and video tutorials (feel free to reach out to Elise at the Design Museum if you'd like more information):

Video tutorial: https://player.vimeo.com/video/1010904267?badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479

In depth Methodology: https://galleryclimatecoalition.org/usr/library/documents/main/gcc-carbon-calculator-2-full-methodology-final.pdf

In depth User Guide: https://galleryclimatecoalition.org/usr/library/documents/main/gcc-carbon-calculator-2-full-user-guide-final.pdf

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Manifesto - digital agency with sustainablity information

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Manifesto - digital agency with sustainablity information

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Digital agency who have spoken at a recent ALVA conference about the impact of digital on our carbon footprint - various blog articles on their website

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The impact of the digital industry: Raising awareness by starting conversations | manifesto

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Starting conversations about the environmental impact of the digital industry is the first step towards educating others and making change.

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Carbon Literacy Project - info on digital

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Carbon Literacy Project - info on digital

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The Carbon Literacy Trust's blog post on the carbon cost of an email, and in the comments below - posts on the carbon cost of social media and streaming

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The Carbon Cost of an Email: Update! - The Carbon Literacy Project

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Emails. Most of us receive hundreds of them every day. We send a lot too. According to Statista, more than 306 billion emails were sent in 2021 and that is expected to top 376 billion in 2025. While each one may seem fairly innocuous, the collective impact of billions of emails can soon add up.

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This tool is designed to help anyone who is interested in their carbon footprint and is planning or evaluating a livestreamed event, digital artwork or digital event. The estimates it produces are based on the best data we could find from peer-reviewed academic papers and attributed sources.

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A checklist of 10 activities is provided in this resource – broken down into two groups; things you as the website owner or administrator can do, and things you can request your web developer or agency to do on your behalf.

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10 ways to make your website more sustainable

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This article on sustainable websites provides a checklist of 10 things your organisation can do to reduce its digital carbon foorprint.

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This briefing report covers:

Environmental considerations and digital technology’s carbon footprint

Data and projections for energy use in the digital industry

Good practice case studies from artists and organisations

Recommendations for planning and measuring impact

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Briefing Report: Environmental Sustainability in the Digital Age of Culture - Julie’s Bicycle

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The digital age is one of the most pivotal and rapid transformations in human history. Digital technology is fast transforming arts and culture, bringing with it a multitude of creative possibilities and opportunities for audience engagement. This briefing report explores digital transformation and its environmental and social costs. It considers how the cultural community can make the most of the opportunities that digital transformation brings, whilst understanding the consequences of our decisions. Produced by Julie’s Bicycle, this briefing paper draws on new data, insights and case studies of good practice to support the arts and cultural sector to navigate environmental impacts and opportunities in the emerging digital landscape. This briefing report covers: Environmental considerations and digital technology’s carbon footprint Data and projections for energy use in the digital industry Good practice case studies from artists and organisations Recommendations for planning and measuring impact Read Full Briefing Paper HERE Read the Executive Summary HERE Looking for further information? To better understand how the invisible impacts of digital technology from creative programmes can be minimised and accounted for, watch JB’s webinar here, developed as part of the Arts Council England Environmental Sustainability programme. Delivered in partnership with Arts Council England as part of their Environmental Programme to National Portfolio Organisations 2018-22.

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Decarbonising the health and social care system

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Decarbonising the health and social care system

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Decarbonising the Health & Social Care System: First Information Webinar

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Decarbonising the health and social care system

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We are interested in building research capacity and generating high-quality research evidence into developing and evaluating innovations focussed on decarbonisation of the health and social care system.

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This is where we have a guide to designing exhibitions with a Lower CO2e impact (in 6 UN languages).

On this page we also have a template carbon calculator (which we are phasing out as we prioritise the GCC tool launching this month).

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Discover how the Design Museum is learning to cut the environmental cost of its exhibitions in response to the planetary emergency.

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Use this service to find out:

the long term flood risk for an area in England

the possible causes of flooding

how to manage flood risk

This service tells you about an area’s long term risk from:

rivers and the sea

surface water

reservoirs

groundwater (where data is available)

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Use this service to find out:

the long term flood risk for an area in England

the possible causes of flooding

how to manage flood risk

This service tells you about an area's long term risk from:

rivers and the sea

surface water

reservoirs

some ground water

Before you start

This service does not tell you:

how likely it is that an individual property will flood

about flood risk from sources such as blocked drains and burst pipes

Other ways to get this information

If you're unable to use the online service, you can call Floodline.

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Check the long term flood risk for an area in England

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Skip to main content We use some essential cookies to make this website work. We'd like to set additional cookies to understand how you use GOV.UK, remember your settings and improve government services. We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services.

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Simple action to prepare for extreme weather

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Simple action to prepare for extreme weather

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Museum of North Craven Life, N Yorks

Large steel tray installed to prevent roof being overwhelmed by rainwater from downspouts. Keeps rainwater from seeping under roof slates and also overspilling onto ground, soaking the base of the wall.

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A grant-giving charity to support projects that improve, repair and maintain community facilities in the UK. Up to £5,000, rolling grants.

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The Screwfix Foundation is a registered charity set up in 2013. We are passionate about making a difference to communities across the UK. We are a grant giving charity with a clear purpose to support projects that improve, repair and maintain homes and community facilities used by those in need throughout the UK.

The Screwfix Foundation currently offers local registered charities and not for profit organisations funding up to the region of £5,000. All applications are reviewed individually by our team on a quarterly basis, the review dates are in March, June, September and December. Please see our Full eligibility criteria.

How do we raise money? We raise funds throughout the year to support causes that will change people's lives. Look out for raffles and fundraising weeks held within Screwfix stores and you can also round up your pennies when shopping online at www.screwfix.com or on the Screwfix app.

As well as helping local charities and not for profit organisations, we also partner with Macmillan Cancer Support, donating funds towards their home improvement programme, which helps people suffering from cancer in financial need with minor home improvements.

You can see all of the great charities we have supported here.

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A link to our Charity page for the Screwfix Foundation. Find out what we do, who we support and how to apply for funding.

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Discovery Museum's new two year exhibition and event programme exploring the story of energy in the North East.

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Discovery Museum's new exhibition explores the story of energy in the North East by looking back to the industrial revolution, and forward to the pioneering contributions in green technologies happening now across the North East region.

With exciting new hands-on displays demonstrating wind and solar power, historical science and engineering objects and even a 'cutaway' electric NISSAN Leaf car on display, Steam to Green will showcase how the North East is leading the way in green energy.

The exhibition was created in partnership with Newcastle University.

Headline sponsor: Vattenfall
Follow this link to find out more about Vattenfall our headline sponsor

Supported by: The Reece Foundation, Newcastle University, Faraday Challenge, Friends of Discovery Museum, the Headley Trust and the Art Fund.

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Steam to Green: A North East Energy Revolution

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Discovery Museum's new two year exhibition and event programme exploring the story of energy in the North East

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Useful Technical guidance on looking after historic buildings and sites, including climate change adaptation, retrofit and energy efficiency advice; plus briefing on recording, and information and project management.

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See our guidance on conserving buildings, making historic places accessible for disabled people, dealing with flooding and surveying.

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Urban nature with lots of interpretation and partnerships

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Networking opportunity though West Yorkshire Combined Authority - there is also funding opportunity for environmental initiative

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Festival for the Future at West Cheshire Museums

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Festival for the Future at West Cheshire Museums

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A sustainability festival including craft fairs, outdoor yoga, open mic nights, ‘climate ceilidhs’, clothes swaps, litter picks, pub quizzes, eco-storytelling, and a local circus troupe. Accompanied by a travelling Augmented Reality exhibition about plastic pollution.

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A guide for galleries, libraries, archives and museums

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The National Lottery Community Fund- resources on Creating an Environmental Action Plan

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The National Lottery Community Fund- resources on Creating an Environmental Action Plan

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Some good tips, ideas and examples here.

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1. Insights

2. The difference we make

3. Learning from communities: tips, ideas and solutions

4. Making an environmental action plan

Everyone who delivers charitable services or runs a community venue can make choices to create a positive environmental impact - saving energy and money, reducing waste, and cutting carbon emissions.

We've created these practical tips as a starting point for any charity or community group looking to co-create an environmental action plan with their staff, volunteers and trustees.

Here we show the benefits of an environmental action plan, and share ideas of what you could include, alongside examples from our grant holders showing how they've made their plans and the difference these are helping them to make.

Listen to this article

You can listen to this article as a sound recording, lasting 16 minutes, by clicking the button below.
Making an environmental action plan

1. Understanding the benefits

Creating an environmental action plan (sometimes known as a climate action, carbon savings, or sustainability plan or policy) helps you embed low-carbon behaviours across your organisation's work.

A plan sets out your environmental objectives, assigns responsibilities, and explains how you will monitor progress.

Plans help to put sustainability at the heart of your work and ensure that your trustees and management, staff, volunteers, service users and partners are all committed to taking positive action.

Having a plan may help you when you're applying for funding, particularly if you want to refurbish or build a community venue. Your funder may ask for evidence that you have considered using sustainable building materials or making energy efficiency improvements.

The benefits of asking everybody to plan for sustainability

Building Better Opportunities (BBO) is a £500 million investment to help people facing the greatest barriers to employment into work.

BBO matched funding from us with money from the European Social Fund (ESF) and producing and implementing an environmental plan was a requirement of all 130 funded employment partnerships. Few of their 2,000 participating community organisations had ever done this before.

At first many lacked confidence, whilst others found it difficult to know where to start. But over time we saw changes: some got expert help, others pooled environmental expertise from partner organisations and some learned from "the early adopters". This resulted in more groups making their own environmental plans, investing in green audits and introducing environmental targets.

Practical improvements followed: groups installed recycling and composting systems, replaced paper with digital forms - enabled by electronic signatures, made improvements to the local environment or retrofitted LED lighting and motion sensors to cut energy use.

In Gloucestershire, Going the Extra Mile employment consortium recorded and implemented 2,460 positive environmental changes in their action plan, which they developed with the help of Green Impact, a United Nations award-winning sustainable planning programme.

These environmental improvements ranged from reducing the carbon footprint of offices and encouraging more staff to use greener forms of transport to work, to planting 1,000 native trees, running household energy efficiency workshops, and improving a local pond to encourage the return of wildlife. Collectively, these saved 72 tonnes of CO2: the equivalent of almost 150 large hot air balloons. Plus the partners and their beneficiaries saved £26,000 - for example through reduced utility bills.

2. Deciding what to include

RecyKillin Tool Library

The content of your environmental improvement plan is up to you, but you could consider:

Carbon footprint

Calculating the total amount of emissions that your organisation generates creates a benchmark, which you can use to identify areas for improvement and to measure your progress.

Carbon Footprint provides a free carbon calculator for small organisations, while WWF has one for individuals, if your staff or volunteers are interested in reviewing their own impact on the planet. ACEVO shares practical resources, including tools for measuring air pollution and the carbon footprint of websites.

Some of our grant holders have worked with a national energy charity, Centre for Sustainable Energy, to better understand their carbon footprint.

At The National Lottery Community Fund, we work with Planet Mark whose 2023 annual assessment showed that we've achieved an 11% reduction in emissions per employee, through improvements to our facilities, waste management, and how much we travel and print. We're now working with a social enterprise Useful Projects to develop a more demanding plan to reduce as much carbon as possible by 2030.

Low-carbon transport

You could start by reviewing Planet Mark's travel emission calculator to get a better idea of emissions linked to business travel and then look to revise your travel policy.

For example, you could introduce a hierarchy of travel options, which encourages virtual meetings, discourages or bans air travel, and prioritises the most sustainable travel options, like cycling, public transport, electric vehicles and car sharing.

Smallwood Trust in Malvern supports staff to use the greenest forms of transport, and employs environmentally friendly taxi services (using hybrid and electric vehicles) when no other option is available.

In Wales, we helped to fund Play It Again Sport 's electric vehicle. As well as cutting emissions, it saved them £600 in fuel costs in just six months.

Waste and recycling

You could calculate how much general waste you produce and how much you recycle and think about how these numbers can be improved. This has been a critical part of our environmental plan meaning we could track the reduction of general waste collected from our offices - by 85% since 2019/20.

We've done this by increasing the amount and range of things we recycle to include food waste and composting. We set up clearly labelled recycling stations, removed individual bins from desks, and worked with suppliers to reduce plastic packaging in food we order. We've also re-used existing furniture when we've downsized or refurbished our office spaces and found new homes for surplus desks and chairs.

Green energy providers

You can check the credentials of potential suppliers, and choose one that offers energy from solar, wind, wave or hydropower. The Big Clean Switch offers advice on making the change, while community energy organisations can also give advice.

Many of our grant holders have switched to green energy providers. For example, in Buckby Library and Hub 's energy and sustainability policy, they committed to using green suppliers for electricity and gas.

Training in low-carbon behaviour

Staff inductions are a good place to embed this way of working, and you could consider including courses such as carbon literacy training for staff, trustees and volunteers in your plan.

In Walsall, Steps to Work briefs new starters on its environmental policy. It runs short talks about what staff can do to work more sustainably, such as turning off printers and computer monitors at the end of the day. Through quarterly meetings, it keeps managers up to date on the latest actions being taken to fulfil its environmental goals.

Reducing energy use

Making improvements to your buildings are an obvious starting point, but consider other options too. At The National Lottery Community Fund, when we needed to upgrade our laptops, we chose ones with improved battery life: 24% more energy efficient compared to the models being replaced. And the old machines are being refurbished and then donated to schools across the UK.

Greener financing

If you have investments, consider greener finance. NCVO has tips on how charities can divest from fossil fuels, moving money away from businesses involved in the extraction, production, transportation, refining and marketing of energy sources that release harmful pollutants.

Environmental champions

Environmental champions, like our Climate Action Network of 79 staff, can raise awareness and inspire and support positive change. These social relationships build on existing trust and connections to create positive momentum for change.

Our grant holder, Green and Healthy Frome, trained 209 health and community professionals from 17 Somerset organisations to be 'green community connectors'. This equipped them with a better understanding of community and environmental health, personal carbon footprints, and reliable sources of information - leading to a 40-45% increase in the number of conversations professionals had with residents about environmentally friendly choices.

Carbon offsetting

You may choose to offset some of the emissions that you can't fully eliminate. Time and Tide Bells, installed a series of public artworks in sites around Britain's coastline to raise awareness of rising sea levels. They chose to pay into Carbon Club which plants trees to offset the carbon associated with making and installing its bell sculptures.

If you're considering this route, the WWF recommends using offsetting projects that are certified by Gold Standard - an independent, internationally recognised benchmark for high quality carbon-offset projects.

Carbon training that motivates action

Climate Action Middlesbrough has trained over 200 staff and residents about the science of carbon (how it's produced, how it behaves, why it's important to reduce it) and practical ways to achieve CO2 reductions.

With funding from our Climate Action Fund, the training is delivered with multiple-choice, quiz-style questions, and has received positive feedback for how it's stimulated debate and motivated people to take concrete action through their work and personal actions.

"I feel torn," reflected one participant. "The training both increased my knowledge massively and frightened the life out of me. At the same time I feel more determined than ever to have a positive impact on my carbon footprint".

3. Co-producing your plan

Age UK Kensington and Chelsea

Working with your trustees, staff, volunteers, and service users to co-produce your plan and develop your objectives can be a useful process in its own right. You're more likely to get a diversity of ideas and it helps ensure that the maximum number of people possible are involved and committed to making a difference.

For example, if you are a bigger organisation:

Your frontline team might lead on ways to reduce the use of disposable and single-use items.

Facilities staff may be able to find ways to recycle more products, switch to a green energy supplier, or improve the insulation in your office.

Colleagues in admin or procurement can ensure that contractors use eco-friendly and renewable sources for goods and services that you purchase.

Your IT team can decommission ageing, inefficient servers, or plan to refurbish and donate equipment that you no longer need.

The finance team may be able to incentivise greener forms of travel through your travel policy.

If you're a small organisation with few staff or volunteers, working on a plan together can still help you focus and make a start, by choosing priorities, tapping into your team's interests and experiences, assigning responsibilities, and deciding timelines.

By working together to look for solutions, you put sustainability on everyone's radar, and encourage people to think positively about what they personally can do to make a difference.

Any organisation can take action - you don't need to be an environmental specialist. Men's mental health charity, Head In The Game published their environmental commitments on their website. These include paperless working, choosing venues easily accessible by public transport, and sourcing second-hand equipment. They also pledge to look out for new approaches to sustainability, creating e-flyers to spread the word. Recent examples cover rewilding and sustainable eating, sharing the benefits and suggesting changes that readers can make in daily life.

Co-producing an environmental action plan for your community

Environmental action plans aren't just for organisations, but for physical communities too. With community-wide plans, you can build sustainability into your other ambitions for your neighbourhood. The residents of Lawrence Weston, a vibrant neighbourhood in north Bristol, came together in 2020 to make an environmental action plan and decide on priorities for their community.

With funding from our Climate Action Fund and expert help from the Centre for Sustainable Energy, they trained community partners to lead on different areas of planning, collecting the views of residents through online surveys and workshops, and embedding co-production and peer review throughout the planning process. They also assessed the community's carbon emissions, seeing which activities had the biggest effect, and debated the emerging priority areas with residents.

This resulted in a plan with 27 actions under seven themes - from transport, housing, energy and food, to waste and consumption, nature and economy.

For example, their baseline carbon calculations revealed that food produced 26% of the community's emissions. So local people came together to support more growing projects, hold cooking classes to help improve residents' diets, cut waste and plastic packaging, opened a community fridge, and set up a food waste collection.

The plan aims to achieve carbon neutrality, but not at the expense of other immediate priorities, such as poverty, housing, and access to services and employment. Awareness of fuel poverty is a driving force for the community's energy group. It's led to an energy efficiency survey, identifying ways to improve insulation in cold homes. The group has worked with Bristol Energy Co-operative to develop a solar farm, generating enough electricity to power 1,000 homes. And the group has financed and built a community-owned wind turbine, with profits going back to the community.

Want to find out more or share your story?

Read our other top tips on engaging people in climate action and reducing the carbon footprint of community events.

If you've had success in developing an environmental action plan, please do consider sharing your tips and experiences with us at knowledge@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk.

Last updated: Friday 2 February, 2024

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Making an environmental action plan | The National Lottery Community Fund

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The National Lottery Community Fund gives grants to organisations in the UK to help improve their communities. The money awarded comes from the UK National Lottery.

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The National Lottery Community Fund resources on Engaging People in Climate

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The National Lottery Community Fund resources on Engaging People in Climate

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Some ideas and examples of practice on the website.

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1. Insights

2. The difference we make

3. Learning from communities: tips, ideas and solutions

4. Engaging people in climate action

Climate change can feel so huge and overwhelming that people may think local action isn't enough to make a difference. But there's lots that individuals and communities can do, and much to be gained - and not just in reducing carbon emissions or increasing biodiversity. Taking action with your neighbours helps build community and strengthen local pride and can also deliver a host of health and wellbeing benefits.

Here we've captured lessons from our grant holders who have successfully mobilised their community to take action, maximised engagement and motivated locals to live and work more sustainably.

Listen to this article

You can listen to this article as a sound recording, lasting 20 minutes and 23 seconds, by clicking the button below.
Engaging people in climate action

1. Make it easy

If climate action feels like hard work or a thankless task, people are less likely to get or stay involved. Make things easy for them, right from the start.

Break things down into clear, concrete, achievable steps. For example, give advice on what, how and where different materials can be recycled locally, especially if it's something not taken away as standard with household rubbish collections. In Edinburgh, Networking Key Services (NKS) and Edinburgh Lothian Regional Equality Council (ELREC) offer targeted support and capacity building for ethnic minority communities. Advice is tailored to people's work and lives, such as waste management workshops for catering staff in Asian restaurants, help with edible gardening and composting, and a trip to a local recycling centre as part of work on how to tackle different kinds of waste.

Remove practical barriers. If you want to encourage litter picking, provide free grabbers and bags. Tamworth Volunteer Litter Pickers supply litter kits, including stickers for bags so that council bin staff don't mistake litter collections for dumped household waste.

Encourage borrowing rather than buying. Tool, uniform and toy libraries are a positive way to help people reduce waste. Totnes Share Shed's most borrowed items include things we all need from time to time, like power drills, strimmers and carpet cleaners. When bought new these are typically only used for a few minutes of their lifetime. Borrowing not only increases how often tools are used, but also reduces unnecessary purchase and saves people money. In two years over 1,700 people used the Totnes mobile share service, avoiding up to 3,200 purchases that would have cost members over £200,000.

Help people gain new skills to repair, adapt and reuse material that would otherwise go to landfill. For example, workshops about upcycling old furniture can encourage more people to hang on to something or buy second-hand. Textile repair workshops enable families to turn unwanted or ripped clothes into something beloved and beautiful, again reducing waste.

Start with the people who are most willing and motivated, as they may just need a nudge to do more. Converting sceptics will inevitably take longer, but it's easier when you have a group of people to help and a track record of making positive change happen.

Share practical ideas about what's happening in your neighbourhood. Using local examples makes it easier for people to see how they could get involved. It also encourages a sense of community and can build resilience: people are more likely to keep going when they feel a positive connection with their neighbours.

2. Get the timing right

People are more receptive to changing their behaviour or taking action at certain times in their lives, or in response to changes in society.

People are more likely to change their behaviour and habits during times of transition, such as moving home or during wider policy and strategy change. So these changes are an opportunity to embed more environmentally-friendly ways of working and living. When the 2021 UN climate change conference COP26 was held in Glasgow, Climate Action Fife organised Fife-wide mass participation events and campaigns to tie in with the conference. These included the "Big Five for Fife" campaign, in which people pledged to make achievable everyday changes, with advice and support on how to make them last. The group estimates that the Big Five pledges and its climate engagement plan led to savings of 76 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, with a lifetime saving of 228 tonnes.

Instant feedback can be effective in galvanising people to take action. In Wiltshire, Great Green Bedwyn used infrared heat cameras to show people the heat being lost from their homes. 15 people went on to improve their insulation and draughtproofing, and some fitted a heat pump. And we've seen that people react to smaller interventions, such as home energy monitors: seeing the reading shoot up when you put the kettle on encourages you to be more careful about over-filling or boiling it so frequently.

Emphasise the link between environmental work and things people already care about. Irwell Valley Sustainable Communities helped Salford residents to flood-proof their homes in response to the flooding of the River Irwell. This inspired further sustainability projects, including community gardens, wetland creation, and carbon literacy education.

3. Make it appealing

The Skip Garden

Changing behaviour requires effort, so it helps if you make it attractive. If you present climate action as an appealing choice, people are more likely to take part. There are simple ways to do this:

Accentuate the positive. Presenting the benefits of a sustainable, green society can be more effective than negative wording about sacrifices and responsibility. That doesn't mean you shouldn't encourage people to make different choices - but it helps to emphasise the personal, societal and environmental benefits, to help offset any inconvenience.

Emphasise the money to be saved. Cutting costs is motivating and doesn't have to be hard. Energy bills can be reduced by turning the thermostat down one degree, water bills by fitting simple water saving devices, and fuel costs by cycling, walking or using public transport. In Wales, 303 working families have saved an average of £426 per family per year just by using tool/toy/uniform libraries, doing home improvements by themselves, and picking up practical money saving tips from others in the community.

Rewards and recognition. When you recognise people's efforts, it can motivate them to do more. Try small prizes for the most active litter pickers, or awards for people or businesses achieving the greatest reductions in energy use. Local press stories highlighting inspiring examples help too.

But be careful with short-term incentives. One-time rewards can be a good start, but evidence suggests that the new behaviour stops when the incentive is no longer there. Longer-term rewards like lowering energy bills permanently, making new friends, or learning new skills can be more effective at supporting lasting behaviour change.

4. Recognise people's desire to connect and belong

The Skip Garden

Framing action as something you can do together, can be very motivating, with the added benefit that people don't want to let their friends or neighbours down.

Emphasise the wellbeing benefits of taking action. The 2 Minute Foundation encourages people to spend just two minutes picking up litter. By making it simple to act they've mobilised over 80,000 residents, with many saying that taking part has strengthened their personal sense of purpose, hope and optimism. For some, this simple, discrete action has helped make them feel more connected to their community and less isolated or alone.

Role-modelling can be effective. Green champions can demonstrate involvement on the ground, while external experts can offer tailored advice. Remember that personality makes a big difference when you're trying to energise and motivate others. Whether you're appointing someone from within the community, or looking for an outside consultant, it's important to match the person to the role.

People like face-to-face contact, and help getting over any initial hurdles. For example, people are happy to use technology that can save energy and save money, but are often put off by the upfront costs of equipment and setup. Leeds Handyman helps older people and vulnerable adults with fuel efficiency, by assessing homes and installing suitable equipment, such as wireless thermostats and smart switches.

Senior buy-in helps motivate others. If an organisation's leadership is visibly invested in climate action, it encourages everybody else to join in. At the Fund, we've set targets designed to help us reach operational net zero by 2030. All directorates commit to environmental actions in their business plans, and 68 colleagues have received training in carbon literacy. We encourage staff to make public transport their first choice for work travel. Flights within Great Britain (except to or from Scottish islands) are permitted only as exceptions, cutting CO2 emissions by 82% between 2019/20 and 2022/23. In the same period, we've cut emissions for travel and overnight accommodation by half, and reduced waste to landfill by 85%.

5. Acknowledge and share the co-benefits

Foothold Cymru

A lot of climate action has additional benefits for individuals and communities, these are often referred to as co-benefits. By emphasising these, you may engage people who might be less easily motivated by the environmental benefits alone.

Showcase all the positives. A community allotment may have many environmental benefits - but it can also be promoted as an opportunity to meet new people, learn gardening skills, and improve health and wellbeing. Y Fasged Siopa, which collects and distributes surplus food, is giving people who need it healthy, good quality ingredients, saving families an average £912 a year on household costs and diverting an estimated 18 tonnes of food from landfill each year.

Calculating and sharing financial benefits can help to influence leaders from businesses and community groups. When energy prices soared during the 2022/23 cost of living crisis, many organisations looked to green energy to help future-proof their premises against rising bills. In Carrickfergus, CWA Brass Band installed solar panels on its community hall, cutting its energy consumption and making the venue more attractive to other groups to use. The Band is also using the panels to promote climate awareness, including a solar power information night with food and a lecture, and work with local schools' eco clubs.

6. Be inclusive

People want to see others like them as part of a movement, and to see that others recognise and want to tackle the specific concerns of their community.

Take active steps to engage a diverse group of people. Practical adjustments like recruiting community representatives into paid roles - and paying the living wage, targeting outreach work with communities you are not reaching and ensuring that both indoor and outdoor venues are accessible to people with disabilities are important ways to make environmental projects more inclusive.

Involve people from diverse backgrounds in decision-making. Co-production techniques and having visibly diverse leadership can help make activities attractive and relevant to a wider range of people.

Profile and platform the work that is already happening. This includes tackling the widespread assumption that environmental action is disproportionately white and middle class. Our report on co-production explains the benefits of bringing together people and stakeholders to create and deliver services.

7. Show the difference you're making

Wheel Together Aberystwyth

Quick wins, visible change and recognition of what people have achieved are good motivators because they are tangible and concrete, and tell a positive and uplifting story of change.

Seeing change in community spaces, or other local people taking an active role, can be inspiring. It demonstrates that people like you can make a difference. Public improvements such as community gardens, allotments and cycling and walking paths will always reach wider audiences. Manchester Climate Change Agency organised urban greening activities in the busy Northern Quarter of the city, including street planters and a gardening takeover day on the top floor of a multi-storey carpark. And the group engaged Manchester City and United football fans in three weeks of sustainable food challenges. Three months on from the challenge, 70% of participants eat less meat, 83% waste less food, and the average participant is saving £17.47 on their weekly shop.

Environmental improvements are sometimes intangible: find ways to make them concrete. In Bristol, Bristol Green Capital Partnership has used Community Carbon Footprints to show what activities are responsible for emissions, and how much carbon they generate. The data is organised under housing, transport, food and diet, goods and services, and waste management. So community groups can see where change is most needed, and what effective action can be taken at individual or community level.

Avoid jargon and use language that everyone can understand. Our Climate Action Fund jargon buster helps unpack commonly used terms, and with support from the Media Trust, we have put together a comprehensive toolkit to help communicate about climate action effectively.

8. Keep up the energy

Time-limited projects and enthusiastic individuals can be great at driving engagement. But what happens when the funding ends, or the person moves on? Think about how you'll keep momentum going over time.

Give your networks a sense of ownership to make them stronger and more lasting. Greening projects - which find ways to add plants to an urban neighbourhood, such as window boxes or vertical planting - could ask volunteers to help with planting and watering. This encourages community pride, while addressing the need for ongoing maintenance.

Find fun ways to measure progress - it will sustain energy and interest. It's motivating to see what you've achieved, particularly if it's done in an engaging way. Footprints Women's Centre installed solar panels, energy efficient light bulbs, cavity wall insulation, and movement sensors for lighting to reduce its carbon footprint. The Centre then installed a battery energy storage system, to store excess energy from solar panels, with a digital screen - which shows the energy being generated, and the money and CO2 being saved. The screen is on display in the Centre's foyer, where it's become a big topic of conversation for everyone who comes in: staff use it to raise awareness and advocate for sustainability with visitors.

Use healthy competition to encourage and reinforce change. You could encourage people to track how much waste goes to landfill in seven days, then see if they can do better next week.

Set targets to keep up momentum, share your aims and have fun. You could have a league table of green action, to see where you're doing most good, and where you might do better. Get the community involved in gardening events, and see who can finish their window box or planter first. It's a way to make the process faster, and to get people invested in the results.

Want to find out more or share your story?

For more detail about how our charities and communities have engaged people in climate action, read our report Community Action for the Environment. And explore our other top tips on making an environmental action plan and reducing the carbon footprint of community events.

If you've had success in motivating residents in your community, please do consider sharing your tips and experiences with us at knowledge@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk.

Last updated: Friday 2 February, 2024

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Engaging people in climate action | The National Lottery Community Fund

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The National Lottery Community Fund gives grants to organisations in the UK to help improve their communities. The money awarded comes from the UK National Lottery.

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Embedding environmental practices and principles into your event hire. The Ashmolean in Oxford participate in this scheme.

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Experience of working with couples means that we know that you wish you had a greater choice when it comes to sustainable (and ethical) suppliers. As responsible business owners, the members of the Sustainable Wedding Alliance are focussed on making both their businesses and the events and weddings they produce more sustainable.

Did you know that the average carbon footprint of a wedding in the UK is more than the average annual household footprint?
Each year, there are approx. 278,599 weddings in UK, however in 2022, due to the postponements, it was estimated to be 330,000.

Check out our Conscious Couples page for sustainable wedding inspiration, our sustainable wedding directory and planning advice.

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Sustainable Wedding Alliance - Building Sustainable Wedding Businesses

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Support and accreditation for environmentally conscious wedding businesses. A purpose driven community passionate about sustainability.

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Wilding - film about Knepp Rewilding project

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Wilding - film about Knepp Rewilding project

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I've put sometime aside for staff to join our Estate Team to watch this next Monday

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Wilding tells the story of a young couple that bets on nature for the future of their failing, four-hundred-year-old estate.

IMDb 7.4 1 h 14 min 2024

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Wilding tells the story of a young couple that bets on nature for the future of their failing, four-hundred-year-old estate.

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Video capturing Healthy Hedgerows project, Wakefield Museums & Gardens by Aprille McShane

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Healthy Hedgerows, Wakefield Museums & Castles

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Healthy Hedgerows, Wakefield Museums & Castles

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Lovely film all about amazing moss.

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This inspiring exhibition at Manchester Museum is well worth a visit.

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How far will you go?

Will going 'wild' help us to tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis?

Our new exhibition Wild, opening in the Exhibition Hall on 5 June 2024, explores our relationship with the natural world and looks at how people across the globe are creating, rebuilding and repairing connections with nature.

What fuels our fear of dangers that lurk in the wild? Can 'wildness' flourish within a city's concrete jungle? How do we care for things we can't see?

Wild will challenge the way we think about nature, whisking you to wild places across the world to hear a diverse range of voices, from Aboriginal elders to researchers and community activists. Find out how they're shaping their environments and looking to wild for a more positive future.

In one case, the restoration of traditional practices is helping to heal both the land and the people. In others, biodiversity has exploded where farmland has been rewilded and the reintroduction of animal species is helping to restore ecological balance.​

Featuring an immersive installation, audio, film and interactive elements, alongside natural history collections and artworks, the exhibition prompts you to notice the biodiversity and heritage of the featured environments while questioning our relationship with the natural world.
Book your free ticket

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Our bold new exhibition, opening on 5 June 2024, looks at how we can go 'wild' to tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis.

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Some lovely examples of climate action here. We will keep growing our bank of case studies. If you would like to contribute a case study please let MD North know.

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Environmental Responsibility – Museum Development North

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Museum Development North enables strong, agile museums to contribute to the distinctive life, culture and identity of the North of England.

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GEM North East: Climate & Education Day 04.09.24, Newcastle

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Join GEM North East for a full day of learning and conversation on how to approach teaching and messaging around Climate change in your venue.

Andy Higgs, Director at Elysium Environmental Learning, will launch the day with a brief overview of the current climate situation. He will share how climate knowledge is delivered in schools, where it fits within the curriculum and how we can support and consider these topics in our settings. He will talk about the benefits for coming together to share knowledge, experiences and ideas throughout the day.

Sophie Westlake from Magna, Vindolanda will share the steps they have taken to include climate and green technologies innovatively within their formal school programme.

Sara Bird from Special Collections at Newcastle University, will share her project work with Northumberland Secondary students, on climate change and countryside management, through the lens of English and Art.

The Learning and Curatorial Teams from Discovery Museum will share their approach to Climate and Green technologies within their new two year programme 'Steam to Green: The North East Energy Revolution'. Steam to Green, created in partnership with Newcastle University, explores the story of energy and the climate crisis in the North East and highlights, and celebrates, the region's pioneering contributions to green technologies.

This part of the day will be in two parts - firstly, explore the Steam to Green exhibition with the Curatorial team. During this time you will hear about the considerations taken when designing the exhibition as well as the experience of collaborating with local green sector organisations.

Then, hear from the Learning team about their journey with developing and delivering climate and green technology based learning experiences for EYFS, families, home educators and school groups.

The Learning Team from The Sill, Northumberland National Park Authority Sill, will then lead a practical planning session providing opportunity to reflect on your own practices and consider what steps you could take to be more climate conscious.

There will be plenty of time for questions throughout the session and opportunities for conversing and practical planning.

You will even get lunch, tea and biscuits provided throughout the day.

All those who work or think about education or visitor engagement in a museum, gallery or heritage setting are welcome, whether you are a GEM member or not.

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gem north east: climate and education tickets

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gem north east: climate and education newcastle upon tyne

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gem north east: climate and education newcastle upon tyne tickets

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Eventbrite - GEM North East presents GEM North East: Climate and Education - Wednesday, 4 September 2024 at Discovery Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Find event and ticket information.

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Museums for Climate Justice - MA resource banks and case studies

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Museums for Climate Justice - MA resource banks and case studies

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Resources bank and case studies

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Museums For Climate Justice - Campaigns - Museums Association

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We are working with museums to be bold and brave in raising awareness, championing change and embedding climate action.

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Our Broken Planet: How we got here and ways to fix it

We are living in the age of humans, a time referred to by many as the Anthropocene. Our species has caused huge changes on our planet, including global warming and rapid biodiversity loss. To explore this and inspire solutions, the Natural History Museum developed the experimental Our Broken Planet exhibition and public programme.

Our Broken Planet was successful in sparking dialogue and debate, going on to be shortlisted for the United Nations SDG Action Awards. It brought together scientists and policy makers and empowered young people to be advocates for the planet.

We have ambitious plans to grow the programme. Our aim is to reach the widest possible audience and inspire action across four key themes - food, materials, energy, and health. To enable this, we're building a Community of Practice to support museums to develop local displays and explore how the content could engage younger and more diverse audiences across the UK.

What is a Community of Practice?

This programme was shaped from the responses to a survey of over 70 UK institutions who told us about their interests, needs and existing expertise in addressing the planetary emergency. As a result, this Community will become a place to interact, learn, and collaborate, fostering knowledge exchange among museum teams, scientists, researchers, youth engagement experts, and cultural practitioners. By participating, you can:

Enhance your expertise in developing innovative exhibitions that explore human impacts on our environment.

Learn to connect climate-related issues with local contexts and collections, incorporating contemporary science research.

Develop skills to effectively engage youth through meaningful dialogue and debate.

Connect with like-minded peers, engage in regional events, share valuable resources, and collaborate on climate-focused engagement strategies.

Gain access to potential funding and resources to translate learning and ideas into impactful practices.

A two-year programme of knowledge exchange and collaboration:

Year One: September 2023 - May 2024

The first year is designed to spark inspiration, knowledge sharing, and meaningful connections. Here's what you can expect:

Online 'Bitesize' Talks: a series of dynamic online talks that delve into contemporary science research on OBP themes. We'll explore effective strategies for communicating this research through programming and displays. These talks are the ideal platform to gain insights from experts across the Museum sector, including curators, researchers, PhDs, and engagement specialists

In-Person Networking Events: five in-person gatherings designed to foster informal networking and the exchange of best practices. It's a chance to connect with fellow professionals who share your passion for environmental engagement and conservation.

Announcing Funding Pots: We'll be unveiling small funding opportunities dedicated to the development of Our Broken Planet-related displays and programming. We hope to collaborate with you to bring innovative ideas to life and contribute to the ongoing dialogue around the planetary emergency.

Year Two: June 2024 - May 2025

As we move into the second year, our collaborative efforts will continue to flourish. Here's a glimpse of what's in store:

Fostering collaborations on the development of regional displays and engaging youth programs focussed on Our Broken Planet's core themes.

Carrying forward our community of practice activities tailored to address the specific needs identified throughout year one, ensuring that our efforts remain effective and relevant.

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Our Broken Planet: Community of Practice

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We are living in the age of humans, a time referred to by many as the Anthropocene. Our species has caused huge changes on our planet, including global warming and rapid biodiversity loss. To explore this and inspire solutions, the Natural History Museum developed the experimental Our Broken Planet exhibition and public programme.

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ICOM Award - sustainable development in museums

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ICOM Award - sustainable development in museums

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Award which seeks to spotlight and celebrate innovative initiatives and exemplary practices that contribute significantly to sustainable development within the museum sector.  Deadline 30 Sept

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This groundbreaking initiative seeks to spotlight and celebrate your innovative initiatives and exemplary practices that contribute significantly to sustainable development within the museum sector.

The ICOM Award is the first global award organised by ICOM that specifically acknowledges and honors sustainable development practices within the museum community. We believe in the power of museums to drive positive change and contribute meaningfully to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The award aims to encourage the participation of Museums in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and shed light on the concrete actions undertaken in that direction. The award process aims to be a platform to communicate the diverse ways that museums are working towards sustainable development and the SDGs.

The upcoming award ceremony will take place at the 2025 ICOM General Conference.

If your museum has successfully implemented sustainable development actions and completed the project, ICOM wants to hear from you!

Submissions will be judged based on the impact created by the project. Initiatives should demonstrate clear results, outcomes,or impact.

ICOM is looking for a diverse range of submissions, from different museum types, addressing different sustainable development challenges.

Submissions are especially encouraged from small museums, small projects, and those that have pushed the boundaries of 'standard' museum practice.

Global Recognition: Showcase your institution or initiative on the world stage as a leader in sustainable development, particularly during the award ceremony at the 2025 General Conference.

Network Building: Connect with like-minded professionals, institutions, and experts from around the globe, fostering collaboration and shared learning.

Inspire Change : Demonstrate the impact of your efforts and inspire others in the museum sector to embrace and strengthen their commitment to sustainable development.

Before submitting your application Submitting your application

Pre-fill the first section of the form and send it, along with the completed project description document, to your ICOM entity to request an endorsement.

Complete the information on the submission portal and upload the project description document together with the signed endorsement letter

Deadline for submission: 30 September 2024

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
The ICOM Award accepts projects that are already completed. Your project needs to be implemented between the 1 st of January 2022 and the 1st of September 2024.

What is the Endorsement Process and how is it carried out?

For ICOM Bodies: You can access the Endorsement Letter, Informative and promotional materials via your ICOM Member Space . If you do not have access to them, feel free to contact us.

For Candidates: The Endorsement Process is a requirement to submit a valid application. Candidates will have to upload the "ICOM Award Endorsement letter" signed by the chair and Representative of the ICOM Body with their application.

For more inquiries, do not hesitate to contact us at mas@icom.museum

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ICOM Award: Candidates Call for Applications - International Council of Museums

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A global organisation of museums & museum professionals committed to the promotion and protection of cultural heritage