Guide to environmental action for creative freelancers

When approaching environmental action, the first step we recommend arts and cultural organisations take is often minimising their carbon footprint. However, as a freelancer with a minimal footprint, you are likely to make more of a significant impact by using your influence.

Culture has the power to influence policy and wider society on the road to net zero and a climate-ready future. When we refer to influence, we mean using your power to encourage behaviour change in audiences and communities, advocating to policy makers, collaborating with other freelancers, cultural organisations or climate organisations, and communicating the importance of climate action to the public and other stakeholders.

Influence as a type of climate action is often deprioritised in mainstream environmental work because it is difficult to measure. Yet it is an important part of contributing to change in our society by creating spaces for discussion, raising awareness and questions and bringing about change in practices.

A good place to start as a freelancer can be:

• Regularly use your platform(s) to share relevant arts and culture resources for climate action across your social media, website, newsletters or other media.
• Define a statement of how you work sustainably and what you expect from other stakeholders. This could cover key areas such as travel and accommodation, energy, waste and materials, food and drink, and communication. Eg a webpage on your website that highlights your commitments to other stakeholders or a green rider to communicate your expectations and offer opportunities for conversations.
• Join or form a working group to work on specific collective issues and advocate for change – eg the Scottish Classical Sustainability Group.

Further resources:

• View Climate Outreach’s resources to learn more about how to communicate about climate change and climate action.

Collaborative and collective action is required to address climate change and achieve transformational change in society. Action by single individuals or single organisations is not enough to address the complex, systemic challenges we face. The sector needs creative freelancers to be part of making this change together.

Collaboration on climate action can take different shapes. It can start by sharing climate resources, learnings and tools with peers and stakeholders, and grow to setting up a collaborative project with your local community.

A good place to start as a freelancer can be:

• Join and browse Culture for Climate Scotland ‘s ‘Find a collaborator’ database.
• Identify and map (on your own or with other freelancers) local climate action and climate or community organising groups.
• Join a community climate hub, such as ECCAN (Edinburgh Communities Climate Action Network)’s arts and climate subnetworks.
• Research tools such as Circular Arts Network to share physical resources within the sector.
• Offer a mentoring opportunity with other freelancers newer to climate action or set up a climate ‘buddy’ relationship with another freelancer.
• Set up a collaborative project across culture, community and climate to deliver transformational change.
• Share the climate action you are taking for Culture for Climate Scotland to platform on social media or other channels, or explore potential collaboration. You can also share them on other platforms where you can reach out to other freelancers and encourage peer-to-peer learning amongst your networks.

Further resources:

• Community climate hubs
• Find a collaborator database

Climate justice takes a people-centred approach to climate change. The essence of climate justice is that the people worst affected by the climate emergency are the least likely to have contributed to its causes.

A key climate justice consideration is to ensure that your work to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change impacts involves, and accounts for the needs of, disadvantaged and marginalised groups. Without rapid action these groups will face worse impacts. Climate change action taken by the cultural sector needs to be fair and equitable and should counter rather than worsen existing inequalities.

A good place to start as a freelancer can be:

• Read Guide to climate justice for cultural organisations to build understanding on what it is and how it relates to the sector.
• Explore how climate justice might apply to your work.
• Embed climate justice into a sustainable work statement (eg a green rider or an environmental sustainability statement) and share it with the stakeholders or partners in projects you are involved in.

Further resources:

• Guide to climate justice for artists and collaborators
• Climate justice and aviation workshop
• Julie’s Bicycle Creative Climate Justice Hub
• Framing Climate Justice provides 10 tips to how you can best communicate about climate justice, based on research by the Public Interest Research Centre (PIRC) on how the UK public thinks.

You can also explore how some artists and cultural organisations have approached climate justice through our case studies and other projects:

• Creative Climate Futures
• CULTIVATE: Creative Dundee – Amplifying and Connecting the City, and their ‘Ripple Effects’ report
• Speculative Energy Futures: Why we need to think about social and cultural aspects of energy
• DISPLACEMENT: Uncertain Journeys
• Young people and the environment at Impact Arts

As part of your environmental action, it is crucial to consider your impact on the natural environment. Although many of the actions to reduce impacts of climate change and our carbon footprint can also contribute to protecting our ecosystems and biodiversity, there are more specific actions that can be taken. These include learning about biodiversity protection in Scotland and actively advocating for change on biodiversity.

A good place to start as a freelancer can be:

• Learn about biodiversity in Scotland and raise awareness about it – eg include a note about your biodiversity commitments or requirements in your green rider or sustainability policy.
• Advocate for change, such as asking for removal of beef from menus at events instead of adding a plant-based option. Beef has an exceptionally high environmental footprint including carbon emissions, land use, water and biodiversity loss, compared to plant-based alternatives. Removing beef is therefore more effective than adding an additional plant-based option.
• Ask how green spaces are used and protected at venues or by your local council.

Further resources:

• How creative organisations and artists can support biodiversity, habitats, and ecosystems
• To learn more about biodiversity and collaborate with local experts in Scotland, there are several organisations you can contact – NatureScot, Scottish Wildlife Trust, Keep Scotland Beautiful, RSPB Scotland and SEPA (Scotland’s Environment Protection Agency).
• For inspiration from artist-led projects on biodiversity you can check these examples: Shore Hunt, using native shore plants a project commissioned by Art Walk Porty; Sentient Garden inspired by indigenous knowledge and recent scientific insights commissioned by Forgan Arts, Portland Inn Project’s pamphlet covering creating ways of making biodiversity visible, Nat Taylor’s work such as Scran Fir Bees, a large-scale art installation that directly helps struggling bees and butterflies.

Depending on your work as a freelancer, your travel may be one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions as an individual. Although we urge you to consider the value of your influence and collaboration as significant climate action, we also encourage you to reflect on your travel emissions and how to minimise them. 

A good place to start as a freelancer can be:

• Think of the different types of travel associated with your work and how frequent they are to understand where you should focus your efforts.
• Use our environmental reporting tools like the quick carbon management calculator, to understand your travel-related carbon footprint.
• Identify actions you can take to reduce your annual travel footprint – eg implementing a travel policy (such as choosing train over plane for a journey within the UK) as part of a green rider that you can share with stakeholders.
• Start conversations with stakeholders and collaborators about sustainable travel and share your experience in your networks.

Further resources: 

• Environmental reporting tools
• Guest article: Slow travel to the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2025
• Guide to writing a sustainable travel policy
• Impact of The Touring Network’s micro-network approach

Other areas that are worth looking into to reduce your carbon footprint include digital carbon emissions and emissions from materials and equipment depending on your type of work.

To maximise your impact, you need to assess where your emissions come from and how much you emit when delivering or producing work as a freelancer. To do so, you can use the range of tools on our website, such as our quick carbon management calculator (opens an Excel document). This tool allows you to quickly calculate the emissions of specific actions to reduce your consumption of energy, travel, waste and water. It can help you decide on the lowest carbon action to take or measure a snapshot of your existing practice.

A good place to start as a freelancer can be:

• As for travel, use our quick carbon management calculator to assess your emissions over a project or a year.
• If you’re approaching the end of a project with little time left for measuring your impact, start by identifying where your main emissions are likely to come from and what is directly within your control, so you can take action. We invite you to email us at [email protected] and book a short 15-20 minute call to help you with this.
• Check your local re-use and repair options and where you can donate or recycle your materials. The Circular Arts Network offers a great service for sharing assets and Circular Communities Scotland provides a network of opportunities within the country.
• Learn more about how you can reduce your digital carbon footprint and develop sustainable digital communications.

Further resources:

• Guide to preventing, reducing and recycling waste

Climate change is already affecting the arts and cultural sector in Scotland – extreme weather events are having an impact on buildings (overheating, dampness, flooding) outdoor events (that can be cancelled due to extreme weather), touring and travel (including that of the audiences), supply chains and more. The creative industries have to adapt to the effects of climate change and think through their activities to understand where climate-related problems might arise.

A good place to start as a freelancer can be:

• Find out more about climate adaptation to understand how it may impact your work and who you work with as a freelancer (see ‘Further resources’ below).
• Look for collective actions that you can join such as the Too Hot to Work campaign organised by Equity (a performing arts and entertainment trade union).
• Plan for climate risks.
• Share your adaptation plans and actions with Culture for Climate Scotland so we can collect a bank of resources to inspire others.

Further resources:

• Adaptation planning – Culture for Climate Scotland
• Recordings on Vimeo: Introduction to adaptation part 1 and Introduction to adaptation part 2.
• Articles and resources on the Cultural Adaptations website which includes two toolkits: ‘Embedded Artist Projects for Adaptation’ and ‘Adapting our Culture’.
• A bank of adaptation plan examples from organisations across Scotland, available to download from Dropbox.
• Tips for working in a heatwave, high temperatures and/or direct sunlight | Equity
• Adaptation Scotland – Verture is an organisation that has built knowledge and expertise in adapting to climate risks and building resilience for community, businesses and the public sector.