For teams

Talks and training for professional groups or events

We aim to support cultural and civic workers to engage communities with the Earth crisis. We offer talks and workshops for teams or workers who might be in:

• Arts & Culture organisations or networks
• Environmental NGOs or voluntary groups
• Public engagement with research, or in education
• Businesses dealing with sustainability or social change

Contact us for our fees and more detail on climatemuseumuk@gmail.com

We can develop bespoke training, or you can select from our three themes for training, below.

1. Grasping the situation: what is the Earth crisis?

• What is the Earth crisis? How are its causes and impacts connected to wellbeing and justice? How do we feel about it? What terms can we use to think about it? How might we talk about extreme weather, or ‘climate emotions’, or think about the future?
• We cover this theme most often in short sessions, contributing to training courses or conferences. Longer sessions can include creative prompts for discussion. You can contact us to facilitate a stand-alone session (60-90 minutes) for your organisation, or to slot into an existing event. 

2. Eco Lens on Things

Most suits museums and heritage organisations. 

Exploring ways to collect and interpret cultural and natural artefacts and sites in this time of Earth crisis, seeing through lenses of climate and ecology. This session invites participants to bring examples of their collection to explore the following through creative exercises:

• How can all things be interpreted with an eco-lens, by putting a relevant slant on your collections that involves people and makes connections?
• How can people be engaged with new approaches to interpretation that develops nature connection & eco-capacities in people?
• How rethinking your collections and stories can be used to face the Earth crisis & inspire a whole museum sustainability shift? 
• Planet: Pulling all these together to have a positive impact on your human & biodiverse communities – in your bioregions and the planet as a whole

3. Cultural Change in a Climate-changing World

• Provide information in advance to participants via email so that they can think about the wider context and range of themes we will explore. 
• Icebreaker activity to stimulate conversation e.g. A time travel activity to imagine their museum & its community in the future (2095). Using this to expand thinking on the threats and opportunities for a more sustainable future. 
• Summarise the context of the Earth crisis, its systemic causes and how cultural organisations will be affected by it, and how they have agency to take action. 
• Use the 8 pathways of the Culture Takes Action framework for participants to work in groups to identify the strengths and priorities of their organisation. Identifying the most suitable routes and relevant reasons to take action. 
• Concluding by introducing the CMUK environmental policy toolkit for organisations to develop their own holistic policies and plans.

Other things we can offer

Print It Yourself display

We can supply high res files for a display of interactive posters and printable sheets of activities. The main posters are designed by young people, and they can be seen here. Our plan is to add to this with more content, including ‘printables’ that can be cut out or folded, to enable visitors to see with their own eco lenses. 

Cost £440, to include a briefing and selection of additional printable activities 

Mentorship / coaching

We can provide ongoing support and mentorship, which might be for an emerging practitioner new in a role tackling a project on climate and ecology themes, or it might be for a manager dealing with challenges. This might involve helping you recruit an Emerging Associate who becomes part of the CMUK community while being located locally to you, and able to work on your project as funding allows. 

Cost £250 a month for e.g. 4 x one-to-one conversations (includes 10% CMUK admin costs).  

Bespoke creation of resources, experiences and activities

We can respond to your commissions, drawing on our team and wider network of artists, exhibition designers, educators and science communicators. We can produce, for example, artworks for display or for your collection, adapted found objects for handling sessions, written texts, digital projects, or learning resources. If you want a local artist / educator to work in a direct or participatory way, we can help brief and mentor them, so that they become part of the CMUK community. 

Cost: dependent on your budget and needs. Working to ACE recommendation of artist daily rate at £250 plus materials/transport expenses (and 10% CMUK admin costs).

We offer unique training, valuable because of the complex nature of the Emergency, and the way it challenges everything we take for granted. Please get in touch on climatemuseumuk@gmail.com to discuss your needs, your budget and what we can offer.

“That was fabulous! You are indeed doing what you say…talking about the problem and engaging with both public and peers. I am inspired.” Alison Smith, following training workshop at MuseumNext, London, June 2019

“Many thanks for your excellent workshop on Friday – you really managed to get everyone talking and thinking about what might be achievable and I hope that we’ll have a good starting point from which things may be taken forward.”  Yvette Shepherd, Museum Development Officer for Organisational Health, after a workshop on ‘What can museums & archives do about climate change?’, November 2019

“The most impressive content from Theme days that ended yesterday was Bridget McKenzie’s keynote speech.”; “It got me thinking about sustainable development in my own work, how we could improve this in everyday work in community section”; “Your performance was the most believable and relatable of them all.” Some comments about a keynote at Museum Theme Days in Helsinki, 2019