Julie’s Bicycle publishes Museums Environmental Framework 7 Dec 2017

Museums are stewards safeguarding collections and heritage for the future, but are working in the context of unprecedented climate change and environmental degradation. Julie’s Bicycle has published a Museums Environmental Framework, with support from ACE, exploring the purpose of heritage in these circumstances, and how museums can embed sustainability and raise public awareness through events and exhibitions. The report first offers a flow chart of how environmentalism can be embedded in a museum – from core values to governance, communications, exhibitions and audiences, and then offers a series of exemplars. Many museums are already offering useful case studies:

• Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums designed a sustainable transport campaign for audiences; ‘Play & Invent’ museum activities using recycling in construction; and staff engagement campaigns such as Green Office Week.
• The Green Museums Scotland campaign will help participating museums across the Highlands to achieve major carbon reduction.
• Manchester Museums' permanent collections invite visitors to look at their attitudes to and values about nature, with themes such as ‘After the Bees’ and ‘Extinction or Survival’. It is hosting a major conference on museums and environment in 2018.
• Leeds Museums & Galleries has worked with local people on events exploring fuel poverty, and is partnering on a gardening for good mental health project.
• All gallery staff at the Whitworth have committed to two days of sustainability work each year, and it has a number of posts dedicated to ‘greening’ the museum.
  
  

  Finally, the report puts museums’ work into the context of existing standards and treaties – from the Paris Agreement, to national legislation, to standards and reports from cultural and energy bodies. Julie’s Bicycle