I began work for ICOM UK with a question: How can museums – and the wider cultural world – remain international without causing environmental harm? One year on, here’s what I have learned.
ICOM’s mission is to connect and represent museum professionals across the world and provide a network for sharing knowledge and practice. The people whose ideas and determination facilitate international exchange rely on air travel, as do the objects featured in international exhibitions. Plane travel enables but – emitting 8% of the UK’s carbon (excluding imports and exports) – is also a major green problem for internationalism.
As ICOM UK’s 2024 conference approached, I was excited to return to Belfast – a place I visited regularly when working for the British Council and a short flight away. But now, it was clear I’d used more than my fair share of carbon and flying was not an option. Per-person carbon consumption since industrialisation is higher for the UK than anywhere, intertwined with the advantages of power, wealth, and indeed museum collections accumulated by countries that industrialised early, often at the expense of others. And my own pre-Covid carbon footprint was way above even the current UK average.
So I took a different route to Belfast, over land and sea. On the way I made friends, experienced music and art, discovered landscapes and language. I spent more time on buses, boats and trains than at the conference itself. Our World in Data revealed the 8-hour round trip by plane would have used 220% more carbon than my 50-hour journey, but with flying so heavily subsidised the price to travel as I did was £152 more, an extra 37%.
In Belfast I learned about green museum activity across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, most visibly with exhibitions that raise awareness and help us imagine alternatives. I discovered climate resources from the Museums Association and the Design Museum and talked to colleagues pushing to reduce energy use through policies rethinking collection storage conditions.
Internationally Ki Futures, CIMAM and the Gallery Climate Coalition are doing valuable work, while back home the wider cultural sector has great environmental resources museums professionals could use. Check out Bristol and Bath Creative R&D’s Creative Climate Action Toolkit; the Theatre Green Book; and material from Julie’s Bicycle.
But none answer that core question: how to stay internationally connected without causing environmental harm? We could despair and conclude that two things we value – internationalism on one hand, environmentalism on the other – clash, and we just can’t have both. However, I’ve recently come across a new way of working that gives me hope.
Live art producers In Between Time once hosted large-scale, influential gatherings of international theatre professionals, until deciding flying could not be part of their business model. Now they interrogate every activity based on sustainability, and make hard choices. They declined a recent invitation to Melbourne, instead dedicating assigned funds to support a Special Envoy on the ground to represent and connect creatively on their behalf.
One year on, ICOM UK is ready to centre environmental sustainability, with three ways you can get involved. First, apply for an ICOM UK bursary from the refreshed programme – it would be great to see applications inspired by Special Envoy. Second, express your interest in ICOM UK’s new Sustainability Working Group to help shape ideas and action. Third, get your ticket to join fellow sector professionals in Liverpool this May for this year’s conference on Regenerative Museums for Sustainable Futures.
Finally, as I hand over to Kristina Broughton as incoming ICOM UK Strategic Director, please keep in touch with me. Together, we need to go much further in understanding how museums can foster international connection and environmental protection. I’d love your help to challenge ingrained ways of working, and identify imaginative responses.
Kate Arthurs, February 2024
