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Starting point

Culture has a vital role to play in tackling the climate emergency and building a better future for all. In 2011, Creative Carbon Scotland, as we were then known, started working with cultural organisations to support them to reduce their environmental impact and collaborate for creative climate action. This work continues today.

Beginning your journey?

We understand that some organisations and artists are still at the beginning of the journey. This page is for you. It will guide you through the first steps to take when approaching climate action, the starting point for your journey to reducing your emissions, adapting to climate change, using your influence and embedding climate justice. We will guide you around the website, linking to in-depth resources and case studies from organisations further along.

You can also join us at an introductory online workshop, which are repeated on a monthly basis.

Climate action needs culture

To begin, we encourage you to watch the video below – Climate action needs culture – made in collaboration with partners from across the Scottish cultural sector for the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow in 2021. Scottish-Nigerian supermodel, actress and activist Eunice Olumide MBE calls for culture to be front and centre of climate action and lays out why this is so important.

Starting Point includes:

Taking your first steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Key to reducing your impact on the climate is to do all that you can to reduce your emissions so we can reach net zero. ‘Net zero’ refers to achieving an overall balance between emissions produced and emissions taken out of the atmosphere, with a focus on rapid emission reduction. The Scottish Government target is to reduce emissions of all greenhouse gases to net zero by 2045 at the latest, with interim targets for reductions of at least 75% by 2030 and 90% by 2040. Read more about policy background on why we need to commit to mitigation in our guide to understanding climate policy.

Most emissions will come from our energy use and utilities, the way we travel, our waste, and our water. We have guides and case studies that outline the rights and responsibilities of cultural organisations when it comes to these emissions.

To be able to take the steps to mitigate, you need to assess where your emissions come from, and what you emit when delivering or producing your work. Take some time to assess where your emissions come from using 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.

Since 2014/15, Culture for Climate Scotland has been working with Creative Scotland to provide a framework for carbon emissions reporting for regularly funded organisations (RFOs), and to support Green Champions in arts organisations across Scotland. From 2025 we will be supporting organisations in Creative Scotland’s new multi-year funding programme as well as some other organisations that need to respond to sustainability criteria in their funding applications.

Since 2018, Creative Scotland RFOs have been required to have a carbon management plan and report to us every year. Read more in the carbon reduction and environmental reporting sections of this website. The cultural sector, as a collective, is aiming to reach net zero together and in the graph below you can see that we are on our way there, with emissions decreasing each year.

Total emissions (tonnes CO2e) since reporting organisations started monitoring

Text alternative for this canvas graphic is in the data table below.
- 2015/16 2016/17 2017/18 2018/19 2019/20 2020/21 2021/22 2022/23 2023/24
Utilities 9925 % 9657 % 10068 % 5863 % 5872 % 3935 % 6018 % 5332 % 5843 %
Travel 4309 % 2695 % 4075 % 4052 % 2849 % 92 % 1001 % 3153 % 4084 %
Waste 987 % 877 % 457 % 300 % 219 % 109 % 134 % 116 % 115 %

You can also read about ways in which some cultural organisations and artists have been taking action to reduce their emissions in these case studies:

Adapting our culture

Even if we were to mitigate all our emissions overnight, or reach net zero, the world’s atmosphere has already changed, and the impacts of climate change are being felt globally. In Scotland, this is resulting in wetter and wilder weather, rising heat, floods, and storms. Therefore, we also need to adapt to climate change, build climate resilience into the work we do and think about how culture plays a role in the adaptation of communities we are a part of.

‘Adaptation’ is the technological, behavioural, managerial or practical response to these changes – not just reacting to them when they happen, but actually changing how we work to be less vulnerable (and more successful) in the future. Adaptation is already happening to an extent at a regional or local level, but increasingly individual organisations will need to understand and adapt to climate change too.

For more information on how and why organisations should adapt to climate change, read our guide to adapting to climate change.

From 2018 to 2021, we led a collaborative project funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme that focused on culture’s role in society’s adaptation to climate change, and the adaptation issues that cultural organisations themselves need to think about. We produced two toolkits for cultural organisations and artists to explore adaptation and culture:

You can read more about the project on the Cultural Adaptations website.

We also have some case studies from organisations that have explored adaptation in their work. They’ll be added here soon.

The power of influence

As well as reducing your direct emissions, and adapting to the impacts of climate change, 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 organisational and personal power to encourage behaviour change in audiences and communities, advocate to policy makers, collaborating with climate organisations and communicating the importance of climate action to the public.

There are several ways you could do this. For example, if you want to encourage sustainable travel to your shows, you could build a partnership with a train company or negotiate with bus companies around travel time. You could also encourage and communicate with your audience’s around sustainable travel. Influence can be used through programming, communication, and marketing, and through partnerships between creative practitioners and those outside the cultural sector. We have a guide to communicating about climate change to support you to do this.

In 2017, Culture for Climate Scotland formally launched the programme that leads our arts into climate work – culture/SHIFT. culture/SHIFT is  focused on harnessing the role of creativity and culture to tackle the climate emergency. Inspired by the work of civic artist Frances Whitehead and the embedded artist project, our programme seeks to do this by supporting collaborations between artists and climate change organisations which mix the skills and competencies of artistic and non-arts partners to address urgent climate and sustainability related issues. We have a culture/SHIFT methodology that describes our approach to supporting collaborations between culture and climate organisations.

You can see how organisations have used their influencing power in the case studies below:

Understanding climate justice

We recommend that you view all climate and sustainability work you do through a climate justice lens. Climate justice takes a people-centred approach to climate change, treating it as a social, political and cultural issue as much as a scientific and technological one. People who are poorer or most disadvantaged are generally those who have contributed least to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change yet are likely to be those who are worst affected by it .

Climate justice requires strong and rapid climate action. It also helps to shape the nature of the action we should take. Action on climate change needs to be fair and equitable and should counter rather than worsen existing inequalities.

We have a range of resources that can support you to think about climate justice and culture:

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

What next?

We hope this guide has been a useful starting point for climate action. Once you have read our resources online, we have many opportunities for your next steps:

  • Join the Green Arts Initiative, an interactive network of cultural organisations in Scotland
  • Join a SPRINGBOARD local assembly in your area. Local assemblies for creative climate action connect people and organisations working on culture and climate change from the same region so they can learn together, share knowledge and information, and collaborate.
  • Join SPRINGBOARD: Assembly for creative climate action on 5 and 6 March 2025. SPRINGBOARD is a long-term collaborative project, led by Culture for Climate Scotland, to bring about transformational change in Scotland’s creative sector to help build a net-zero, climate-ready world.
  • Check out our events page to find climate events and opportunities happening near you. This includes upcoming events for Green Tease, an ongoing informal events programme connecting cultural practices and environmental sustainability across Scotland.
  • Get in touch! We’re always happy to help you with climate action. Let us know what you need from us by contacting sarah.o’[email protected].