This recording is from the Future of Museums Summit held October 29–30, 2024. Rose Hendricks, PhD, Seeding Action Research Director at the Association of Science and Technology Centers, explored the urgent need for cultural organizations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and to leverage their influence to inspire community climate action. Key focal points included operational sustainability, inspiring public action, and community resilience.

Transcript

Rose Hendricks:

Hello and welcome. We are so glad you joined us for this section on Decarbonizing Museums and Inspiring Public Action. My name is Rose Hendricks and I’m the Seeding Action research director at the Association of Science and Technology Centers. I’m delighted to present today with two colleagues, Terry Donofrio, also at ASTC, and Andrew Lampl, who’s the Climate Toolkit manager at Phipps Conservatory. We’re going to jump right in and we’re eager to share a bit and then hear from you all. So, if we could put the slides up. Thank you. We can go right ahead to the first slide. Our jumping off point today on the next slide is that museums are taking an inspiring climate action already.

This is central to so many of their priorities, their missions, and their ethos, the way they operate, everything from their facilities and operations to the ways they engage with their communities and the partnerships that they build as well. We also know on the next slide that they want to do even more. On the next slide. Thanks. In addition, we know that their audiences are also hungry for more climate action as well. We see this from a number of different polling sources telling us that audiences are keen to learn about and have opportunities to engage in climate action. Next slide. The focus of our session today and really the driving point of our collaboration is that networks really can enable collective impact.

So, we know that every museum is in a unique context, has unique mission, history, and priorities. So, they’re going to take diverse approaches to climate action. This is great. This is an asset. At the same time, by working in coordination with each other in collaboration by sharing insights as museums learn what’s working and what’s not and working through challenges together and coordinating some of their approaches, we can actually make a much greater impact. Next slide please. So, to build on that, our goals for today are to introduce two particular networks that support museums’ climate efforts.

First is Climate Toolkit that Andrew will speak about in a moment, which really focuses on the facilities and operational pieces that museums can do in addition to others, and Seeding Action, which focuses a bit more on the public engagement and content opportunities that museums have. So, together we cover the full spectrum of ways that museums might serve as climate actors in their communities. We’ll introduce the why of both of these networks, what they both entail, how you can be part of them, and then we’ll jump into sharing some examples of climate action at museums, including asking you for some of your favorite examples, whether at your own organization or elsewhere.

Then in our interactive portion, we’ll also surface some of the climate action priorities that exist across organizations and close by making sure you have access to a variety of resources that you can use in your efforts. So, with that, Andrew, let me turn it over to you to talk about the Climate Toolkit.

Andrew Lampl:

All right. Thank you so much, Rose. Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Andrew Lampl, and I am the Climate Toolkit Manager here at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I’m really excited to introduce our first climate network to this audience, which is the Climate Toolkit for Museums, Gardens, and Zoos. Next slide please. So, I’d first like to set the stage for why this network was launched with a bit of climate reality or a snapshot of where we are right now.

Next slide please. So, last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released their final report, which tells us that human health biodiversity and the planet are on the line, and that we are living in a critical 10-year opportunity window in which to implement deep and sustained climate solutions, which will have tremendous and lasting impacts now and for thousands of years into the future. Next slide please. So, we started thinking about the collective outreach power of our combined network of cultural institutions. That’s museums, science centers, botanic gardens, zoos, aquaria, and broadly speaking, there are over 100,000 museums worldwide, 10,000 zoos, 4,500 botanical gardens, and all serving nearly 1.5 billion visitors annually.

So, just imagine if this entire network of cultural institutions were to activate and lead by example in the climate space while inspiring their visitors and surrounding communities to do the same. Imagine the tremendous ripple effect of climate solutions being at the forefront of all of our cultural institutions. Next slide. So, in 2020, we launched the Climate Toolkit Initiative, which is a collaborative opportunity for museums, gardens, and zoos to band together and address climate change through operations and public programming. So, the Climate Toolkit currently embraces a framework of nine focus areas.

You can see here buildings and energy, water, food service, transportation, waste, landscapes, investments, engagement and research, next slide, and 33 climate action goals or commitments within this framework of nine focus areas. So, when an institution signs on to join the toolkit, they take stock of any climate work that they are already doing, have already accomplished, while also pledging to goals to achieve by certain target dates. These goals can range from generating 100% renewable energy on campus, composting food waste, engaging in sustainable landscaping, eliminating single use plastics to forming institutional green teams and teaching facts and best practices on climate change solutions. Next slide. To date, the Climate Toolkit is currently partnered with…

Actually, this slide is out of date. We’re actually at 203 institutions as of today in 23 countries and serving more than 100 million annual visitors. We would love for you to be involved. This is a free network. Once you join, you’ll have access to interactive working groups, webinars, regenerative thinking workshops, mentorships, collaborations, and new climate action frameworks. So, we really hope that you’ll join the initiative to share, mentor, and learn how museums can be at the forefront of inspiring the next wave of climate solutions and addressing this climate emergency. Now I’ll send it over to Rose again to introduce ASTC’s Seeding Action Network. Rose?

Rose Hendricks:

Thanks, Andrew. Always so fun to hear about Climate Toolkit. Next slide please. Last year, the Association of Science and Technology Centers launched Seeding Action, which is our network designed to cultivate a culture of action to improve planetary health and really arose from what we were hearing from our members that they were hungry for more opportunities to trade insights and work together to collaborate, to really build not just one-off actions, but cultures of actions in their local community. Next slide please. Seeding Action is designed to catalyze and support science centers, museums, and other public engagement networks and organizations, as I said in their work, to cultivate a culture of hope and action to improve community and planetary health.

We use the broad frame of planetary health because it really encompasses so many interrelated concepts, challenges, and opportunities, and allows every community and museum to find their specific place within that. But concretely, we’re talking about work that reduces pollution, climate change, and biodiversity laws. Next slide, please. Any organization is welcome to join Seeding Action. The commitment is that they will prioritize planetary health through their content, partnerships, and operations in whatever ways makes sense for the unique organization. There are no prescriptive ways to engage in this network. As with the Climate Toolkit, there is no financial cost to join.

Seeding Action provides scaffolding that then supports members to build their capacity for impact in a few primary areas. First, relationships as the absolute foundation of this effort, organizing opportunities for members to exchange insights and ideas with each other within the Seeding Action network and to meet experts and partners beyond network as well, leading work in the area of resources and information. We’re working toward being able to offer funding and also templates and components for things like exhibits and programs. We already are able to offer some shared data and evaluation tools and guidance training and coaching to put all of that into practice as well. Then because this is the network, we all benefit from the collective efforts.

So, cross-site evaluation, advocacy for the roles of museums in engaging their local communities for planetary health, shared publicity and opportunities to co-create content as well. Next slide please. We’ve designed all of these things with two sets of outcomes in mind, first for the members to have some internal change, institutional changes. So, finding new opportunities to make their operations, their decisions more aligned with planetary health, the opportunity to create new programming on planetary health and bring in new audiences as well, and then these things will of course lead to increased competitiveness for new funding sources.

They’ll also see a number of external outcomes though, including a significant public reach with productive narratives and opportunities to take action. They’ll have opportunities to build capacity for strengthening their partnerships and relationships to support positive community and planetary health. Then all of this really feeds into a growing number of people in every community who adopt a mindset of active hope and understanding that we can make this world better and we all have a role to play in doing that. With that, just a quick taste of both networks. Next slide please. We are eager to hear from you and some of the work you know of and are engaged in. Terry, I’ll pass it to you to introduce our next component.

Theresa Donofrio:

Thank you so much, Rose. Now that we’ve had an opportunity to share a bit about our network and our goals for this session, we’d like to invite everyone into an interactive space where we’ll have the chance to share and uplift some of the promising approaches for addressing climate change and reflect on some of the priorities, practices, questions, and challenges that are often part of this work. In just a moment, you’ll receive an invitation to join our Miro page, which should be pinned at the top of the chat. Once you’ve had an opportunity to access the page, you’ll find a pretty large grid in the center. You’ll find how to use this board panel on the left and then a green table in the middle.

That green table is going to be the shared space that we’ll use to uplift the inspiring work that museums and related organizations are already doing to motivate climate action. You’ll see that there are already some examples on this board. We invite you to pick a square that interests you and share some of the examples that you have found noteworthy. These examples do not have to be from your organization, and we do ask that people share publicly available work. You can also use the hyperlink icon to connect the sticky notes to a website.

We are going to hold about three or four minutes of space to invite everyone to add an example or multiple examples, and then we’ll also hold a little bit of time for people to read and review the board, respond and possibly react to some of the existing notes. So, as everyone finds the link for the Miro in the chat, we’ll hold just a bit of quiet space for people to find some sticky notes and add some examples that are top of mind.

If you’ve primarily been in writing mode or adding mode, we’re also going to encourage a couple of moments for people to pause once they’ve had a chance to add a contribution they might be writing and just take a moment to also read some of the other things that are already being posted to this board. Notably, you’ll have access to this space. So, this is just an opportunity to get a sense of what some people are already adding to our shared interactive Miro.

It’s wonderful to see so many Post-Its already being added to this board. As I noted, we will leave this board open. So, you’ll have an opportunity to read this board after the session ends. So, I’m also going to highlight on the other side of the page, you’ll see that there are three blocks with three large questions, questions related to goals, questions related to open questions, and questions related to priorities. As we just did with the table, we’ll also hold some space and invite you to add your response.

There’s no need to answer every question knowing that our time today will go quite quickly. Instead we’ll encourage you to address whatever question is speaking the most to you right now. We’ll hold another five or so minutes of open writing space, a little bit of space for reflection and reading what other people are adding to the board, and then we’ll create some space for conversation and discussion groups shortly after that.

If you are still writing, absolutely capture whatever you would like to have captured in the sticky notes for now. If you are at a place where you’ve caught the idea that you wanted to capture on the board, this might be a great time to just take a pause and have an opportunity to read some of the other notes that have been contributed to the space. We’ll hold just a couple more minutes of focusing on the Miro before we head into some small group conversations.

Again, thank you so much for your generosity with your thoughts and with your insight and the expertise that you’re sharing on this Miro board. We are excited to be in conversation with you all through these sticky notes and we are about to create an opportunity for you to be in conversation with one another in breakout rooms. In just a moment, you’ll be invited to join a room of about three or four people for conversation. The two primary questions we will invite you all to address are included in the box with the blue header on the right hand side of the page.

In that box, you’ll also see that we invite you to adopt an approach to conversation wherein you hold a minute or two of space for each person to share whatever is on their mind related to these questions so that everyone who would like to speak has the chance to do so before jumping into conversational exchanges, asking and answering questions, et cetera. As a gentle reminder, we encourage everyone to use these spaces in a forward looking way. So, not so much of a focus on what we may have already done but instead thinking what’s next. So, in a moment, you’ll receive an invitation to join a breakout room for discussion, and we’ll be there for about eight or nine minutes before we return back to the main space.

Andrew Lampl:

All right. Hi, everybody. As we are trickling back in, well, first, we wanted to say thank you for interacting with that Miro board. It was so exciting to watch all the different cursors and all the sticky notes going on. I’m really looking forward to diving into that soon and wanted to just take a minute or two for us to reflect on those breakout rooms and the Miro board session and to drop a few words of reflection in the chat. So, just really around two questions. What inspired you from today’s Miro or breakout conversation or what is the next climate solution that you’re looking to implement at your institution?

If you can just take a minute or two to drop some thoughts into the chat and we can share out what we learned and what we experienced. Amy Burke says, “I’m inspired by all these colleagues working towards good, the greater good. This is a heartwarming session.” Thank you, Amy. I felt the same way and it’s really fantastic to be engaged with this community, to know that we’re not working alone and that the silos are coming down. Anybody else want to share some thoughts from today? Jennifer from Diverse Works says, “Collaboration and partnerships seem to be the key.” Yes, absolutely. Our ripple-out effect becomes tremendously more impactful when we’re working together, when we’re not feeling like we need to reinvent the wheel or to go at it alone.

Ariel from AAM said, “I thought the comment in the Miro about how museums can be places of refuge during natural disasters is very interesting.” Yeah, I absolutely agree. I would love to unpack that more if any institution in the summit is engaging in that work. Take just another minute or two to drop any final thoughts into the chat and then we’ll close out today’s session. Rose says that “What stands out to me is the wide range that museums are engaging and want to engage.” Absolutely. I think that the hunger is there, the desire to do great work is there, and I think we’re finding our community right now as we speak. All right.

Well, I will take us towards our close then. So, we wanted to just share in the last couple of minutes some concrete steps that this audience can take in engaging with each of our networks, building relationships, and elevating your work. So, just a couple takeaways, no matter what next steps you identified, we would love for you to join both of our networks, Climate Toolkit and Seeding Action. You can find links to both of these networks at the bottom of the Miro board directly underneath the grid. Again, both of these networks are free and each institution that joins these networks truly strengthens and adds legitimacy to these vital initiatives. So, please consider joining both.

Also, you’ll note on the Miro board that we have a two-question survey that we would love to hear your feedback. The survey will be kept totally anonymous and will not be shared beyond this team of three that you see here before you. The survey really gets at what was your biggest takeaway from today’s session and what might help your organization advance your climate priorities. It also has a section to add your name, org, and email if you’d like us to contact you for further conversation or collaboration. Now, I’ll send it back to Rose for some final closing thoughts. Thank you all.

Rose Hendricks:

Thanks, Andrew. I will also just echo your thanks and Terry’s earlier, really appreciated seeing all your reflections in the Miro and hope that you found this as fruitful as we have. Could we put up just the final slide with some parting words to send us off today? This is a quote as I’m waiting for the slide from Mary Annaïse Heglar. She wrote an essay called, “Here’s Where You Come In” in the collection, Not Too Late. Oh, don’t worry about the slide.

She writes, “Especially now at this critical stage, we have to accept that we’re all going to have to buckle down for the long haul. Responding to this crisis is going to have to become part of who we are all the time. Once you understand that, you understand that this isn’t about climate action at all. It’s about climate commitment. Climate action is recycling or voting or opting for a vegan meal. Climate commitment includes those singular actions but is bigger still. It’s a framework. It’s asking yourself: What can I do next? And always next.” Thanks again for joining us today.