Reflection: Climate resilience in Orkney

On 28 April, cultural organisations, artists, academics, community energy organisers and third sector organisations gathered at King Street Halls to explore the role of creative collaboration in building climate resilience across the Orkney Isles.

Creative climate action in Orkney

Culture for Climate Scotland collaborates with regional partners to deliver place-based local assemblies. The aim of the assemblies is to explore how climate and culture can collaborate to facilitate creative climate action. This local assembly – the third in Orkney – was delivered in collaboration with Community Energy Scotland, Islands Centre for Net Zero, artist Louise Barrington, Stromness Museum, Tackling Household Affordable Warmth Orkney and The Highlands and Islands Climate Hub.

This local assembly was focused on the theme of climate resilience. We used the Adaptation Scotland definition – ‘climate resilience is the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to hazardous events, trends, or disturbances related to climate’, as featured in Adaptation Scotland’s Community Climate Adaptation Routemap.

Scales of resilience

Building resilience is about becoming better equipped for the present and future changes brought about by the climate crisis. These changes affect every scale of how we live our lives – from the ways we heat our homes to the energy systems our society relies on.

For the local assembly, we invited experts to share their understanding of individual, household, community and regional climate resilience. Here is an excerpt from each perspective:

Individual

Sam Stringer, Natural History Collections Project Outreach & Engagement Facilitator, Stromness Museum, led a mindful nature connection workshop.

‘Nature connection builds personal resilience for our physical and mental health and wellbeing, as we can learn lessons from the ways nature adapts to changing environments. Connecting to nature has been shown to improve mood and sleep, reduce feelings of stress and loneliness and improve confidence and self-esteem. Our activity helped us focus on our surroundings, work towards a common purpose and create time and space to bring attention and perspective.’ – Sam Stringer

Household

Michael Butler, Innovation and Development Lead, Tackling Household Affordable Warmth Orkney, gave a presentation on the correlation between (inter)national inequitable resource distribution and household insecurity. Michael referenced the G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Inequality 2025 report (PDF 1.05MB), which describes economic inequality (in incomes and assets) tends to be strongly correlated with inequalities in other areas (such as exposure to environmental hazards, or food insecurity). The report calls for redistribution of asset ownership and redistribution of income from those assets. Michael suggested that in Orkney this could look like community owned energy, or a local credit union.

Community

Dr Antonia Thomas and Joanne Kaar from the University of the Highlands and Islands Orkney, shared artefacts and artworks from the TRANSECTS project. TRANSECTS explores the profound environmental and socio-cultural upheaval of past energy transitions in coastal communities. Joanne, an embedded artist on the project, brought a patchwork jacket she had created using second-hand workwear from the oil and gas industry to the assembly. Participants were invited to sketch and write their reflections on marine energy transitions and coastal community resilience on the jacket.

Regional

Becky Ford, Island Community Action Network Development Officer, Community Energy Scotland, presented her work on regional energy resilience. Becky works on projects across the Western, Shetland and Orkney Isles on the Carbon Neutral Islands project and the Island Centre for Net Zero. Carbon Neutral Islands – through engagement led by community development officers from each of the islands – aims to develop island-led Community Climate Action Plans. The Island Centre for Net Zero is a capital project of £16.5 million to build energy infrastructure and support the islands to reach net zero emissions.

Transition lab

Dr Paolo Cherubini, Post-Doctoral Research Associate Island Centre for Net Zero, devised and facilitated a transition lab exploring a future beyond ‘fossil-fuelness’. The Island Centre for Net Zero describe ‘transition engineering’ on their website as ‘a branch of engineering that looks at how our engineered systems – like transport and energy – connect with the economy and society’. The goal is to redesign these systems so they use less energy and fewer resources, while also improving life for people and the planet.

The transition lab explored the way fossil fuels are embedded within the ways we move, the ways we wash and the ways we store food. Participants identified:

• The hidden expectations of ‘fossil-fuelness’.
• Alternative ways of doing things which already exist.
• What – in a present and ongoing energy transition – must be maintained.
• The role of art and culture in supporting alternative ways of being.