 Hello, everyone. Welcome. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us again virtually. My name is Elizabeth, and I am the project officer at the Network of European Museum Organizations. And today it is once again my pleasure to welcome you to our afternoon session of our European Museums Conference, Museums Making Sense. Before we begin with our prepared Wednesday afternoon session, I would like to review a few of the technical expectations for the session. Your cameras will be off, but you will be able to see our speaker. If you have questions throughout, please feel free to submit them in the chat. There will be a Q&A session at the end of the webinar. If you have technical or organizational questions, please write a message to office at Nemo.org. If you can't hear us or if you're having issues connecting, we of course always recommend to check your settings or close Zoom and try to rejoin. So today, I have the pleasure of introducing a webinar on a topic that I am very passionate about and that of course is very important to Nemo as well, sustainability. We are turning to an expert on the matter, Caitlin Southwick of Key Culture, who today will be discussing with us how we can make our museums more sustainable. So without further ado, I'm going to hand this over to Caitlin to get us started. Thank you so much, Elizabeth, and thank you everyone. Hello, welcome. Good afternoon. My name is Caitlin Southwick and I am the founder and executive director of Key Culture. And as Elizabeth said, I'm here today to talk to you a little bit about sustainability. So I am going to share my screen. I hope everyone can see it's a gorgeous sunny day in Amsterdam, a rare one. So if blinding light comes in, apologize for that, but we're enjoying that. All right, so we'll start sharing now. Always learning these technical things. Brilliant. Welcome. All right. So as Elizabeth said, today we're going to be talking about sustainability. Basically, sustainability is something that I think a lot of people hear the word, but we're not quite sure what it means. So what I really want to do today is try and kind of break down a little bit of those barriers between this intangible concept of sustainability and start thinking about what sustainability actually means to us as museum professionals and how we can start practicing towards making a more sustainable future together. So sustainability right now tends to be this bubble within a bubble within a bubble. We're a small sector, if we're being honest, I think we're big, but in the grand scheme of the world, you know, we have cultural heritage, we have museums and then we have sustainability, which is kind of this, this niche topic within a niche topic within each topic. And so it tends to be something that doesn't get as much attention or focus as maybe we would like it to. But today we're going to work on popping this bubble and figuring out what sustainability means to us and how we can actually start taking some action. So what is sustainability? Well, when we start talking about sustainability, we may have several different kind of concepts in mind. A lot of people think sustainability is making positive change. It's maybe being environmentally responsible. Maybe it means being socially responsible. A lot of people tend to think that sustainability is something that's important for the future. But what we really need to start thinking about is the fact that sustainability is not this intangible topic floating in the cloud. It's something that is accessible to us today. And it's not something for the future. It's something for now. So sustainability in its current use was first quoted and the Club of Rome in 1972 as a state of global equilibrium. Later in the Bruntlin report, it was described as something that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. My personal favorite definition of sustainability is something that really rang true to me and actually started launching me on this entire journey of why we as cultural heritage professionals need to be sustainable. Because sustainability at the heart of it is doing good without doing harm. Now, this is something that Henry McGee told me once and it just resonated so deeply because my background is actually in art conservation. So I am a trained stone conservator of my doctorate from the University of Amsterdam. But when I was practicing conservation, I felt obviously I'm doing something good. But the way that I was doing it was causing harm to the planet. And this didn't seem to make sense to me. So when Henry was telling me about this concept of doing good without doing harm, that really resonated because obviously what we do in our jobs is incredibly important work. And it actually is outlined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which we're going to delve into in a minute. But the really important thing that we can think about is not just what we're doing, but in the way that we're doing it to make sure that we're doing things that actually are not just promoting good, but doing it in a way that actually can be beneficial for our planet and for our society. So I'm not going to get into all of the details about sustainability, but this is just a general overview of kind of where we're at when we mentioned this word. The current status, the current definition of sustainability is really rooted in the 2015 Agenda 2030. We've heard the Paris Agreement, it was signed at the same time, but Agenda 2030 is a broader scope, and it's a way to contextualize sustainability that goes through the five P's, which are people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships. And you'll see down here that these are all interconnected. And we're going to go through a little bit today and figure out what this means for us and how we can help support Agenda 2030 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. So I'm sure most of you have heard of the SDGs. They are the blueprint for the future. This is really the targets and ways that we can actually start being more sustainable and what we're trying to achieve in order to have a sustainable planet and society. Now, I am a huge proponent of the SDGs. I love the way that they really show the interconnectivity of all of these elements of sustainability, from social to environmental, obviously economical as well, from development to reduce. It's a really great way to kind of frame what we mean when we're talking about sustainability. One issue I've had with the SDGs is that they were really written for policymakers. So when you start looking at the targets, I mean, number one is no poverty, and you start looking at the targets and you think, well, this doesn't really apply to me in my work. So what we want to do today is figure, is deconstruct the SDGs and actually figure out a way that they can relate to us because while there are certain SDGs that specifically discuss cultural heritage or sustainable tourism, every single one of these sustainable development goals relates to us and our everyday work. I think that one of the things that has prohibited sustainability from really being a mainstream topic within our sector is this concept of intangibility. It's a little inaccessible, it once again is stuck in this bubble within a bubble within a bubble. We're all obviously amazing people who do amazing work and want to do it in a way that is sustainable. But there's a lot of things that have held us up from acting more sustainably. So what I've really identified are a lack of time, a lack of expertise and a lack of resources. So a key culture that's something that we're really focusing on. And I'll talk to you guys a little bit more later about what we're doing a key culture, but I think that we all have the intention to be more sustainable. If we just knew what to do or how to do it. So we're going to go through some really practical ways that we can start applying sustainability in our daily lives. The first course that we keep in mind throughout the course of the next 40 minutes or so is that everything is interconnected. I already talked about how sustainability and the SDGs really lay out the framework for that interconnectivity, but we can really start seeing that, especially this year in a way that we've never been able to see it before. I mean, we can't talk about the COVID-19 pandemic without talking about loss of biodiversity. We can't talk about social injustice without talking about burning of the Amazon. We can't talk about Black Lives Matter without talking about pollution. So it's a really interesting way because more prevalently than ever before, we are really seeing this cause and effect cycle. So we need to take a step back because I think the important thing is that we need to figure out what questions we're going to be asking. And some of the questions that I think are really important for us in our daily practice is to be asking, what are we doing? Who are we doing it for? And how are we doing it? Of course, the number one question, and this is something that Al Gore says in his, in his Climate Reality Project presentations, is do we need to change? I think that most of us realize that we do need to change. So then the next question, of course, becomes how do we change? Sustainability to date, of course, as I've already mentioned is something that has kind of seemed a little bit outside the realm of the museum world. You know, when you go into a museum, you don't start thinking about, oh gee, I wonder what the carbon footprint of this museum is. But we as museum practitioners all understand the incredibly intensive energy consumption of our buildings. Of course, this is to maintain our collections. So this is one way that we can already start making connections. Another thing that has been a very hot topic lately and something that needs to be addressed even more is this idea of decolonization. So we're going to talk about how some of these concepts within our daily work are directly relatable to the entire sector of sustainability. But it's not just about understanding how it applies to our sector, but also how it applies to us, and making a personal connection with sustainability, finding something that you care about that turns talk into action. That's how we can make it accessible and practical. So what we're going to do today is look a little bit at the various concepts and various aspects, and then see how we can turn our desires into practical actions. Now, we've all seen the effects of climate change and what's happening to our cultural heritage from coastal erosion to flooding all over Europe. This is a very tangible way that we can see how climate change is directly affecting our jobs and our lives as cultural heritage professionals. But I think one thing that we're not focusing on is really how we're contributing to the problem. Now there has not been a lot of benchmarking done for the energy consumption of museums because we're a small sector and because we're doing good, so we can kind of negate the harm. But we have to stop thinking like that because our job as cultural leaders is not just to start talking about sustainable issues, but it's also start practicing what we preach. And it's so important that we take a look at the way that we're conducting our day to day business in order to find out how we can actually start being more sustainable and demonstrating that it's possible to do this. As I said, there is not a lot of benchmarking that's been done in terms of carbon footprint of museums, but there is some research that comes out of the United States. A woman by the name of Joyce Lee has been doing some incredible work and she found that in the United States, museums alone, so not including storage, not including personnel or art transportation, produce 12 million metric tons of carbon emissions every year. That is the equivalent of all of the cars in the city of London. So all of that smog in London is what's being produced by the museums in the United States alone. So maybe we actually have a little bit bigger footprint than we think we do. The other thing that's of course, we've already touched on and we'll be talking about more and more today is this idea of decolonization and social sustainability. Now, at the heart of our jobs and at the heart of our institutions is this social aspect, you know, we're there to serve our communities. So the question now of course, is that how are we doing that. How does the way that we present history affect society today and affect future societies. I think that a lot of people kind of shy away from these topics of decolonization and repatriation structural racism, because they're really difficult topics, but it's really time for us to stop hiding and start asking the tough questions. So, what do we do about this. Well, we're going to go through some practical things but I think that just to kind of get context of what we're going to be thinking about. It's really about asking these questions. So what are we practicing. What are we preaching, and how are we doing what we do. So we're going to go through and analyze a few of these things now. I already introduced the United Nations SDGs and I talked a little bit about how they're really specifically for policy makers. So now what I want to do over the course of the next few slides is break these down and translate them for us as cultural heritage professionals. Now, the good life goals are basically a translation of the SDGs for everyday people. And this had me really inspired when I heard about this because of course, as an everyday person, even in my personal life, I can look at the SDGs and think that's great but I'm still not quite sure how I'm supposed to eradicate poverty and all of its forms in the entire world. So do I donate? Do I, what does that look like? So the good life goals were actually created as a basically a footprint for individual people and how they can start supporting the SDGs. So inspired by this, I decided that we were going to go ahead and make a version of this for cultural heritage professionals. So what we did, and this has been a joint effort over the past couple of years, is we've looked into the targets of the actual United Nations SDGs and took out what the various specific targets are that are really related to us as cultural heritage professionals. We also looked to the good life goals to see what recommendations they had for upholding the SDGs. We mixed these all together, added a little bit of museum jargon in there, and came up with the cultural heritage SDGs. So the cultural heritage SDGs are going to have a soft launch in January of next year, and then we're going to spend next year inviting everyone to co-create the targets and goals for this particular resource. And our hope is that we can launch these along with COP next year in order to have a sector wide consensus on how we as cultural heritage professionals can start supporting and helping to achieve the SDGs. But what I'd like to do today is go through some of the SDGs for cultural heritage professionals so that we can really start to get concrete ideas of what we can do in our daily professions to be more sustainable. So as I said, this is how the cultural heritage SDGs are going to work. Their really idea is to make these an accessible tool for cultural heritage professionals like you and me. So the first one we're going to start off with is education. Now, there are a bunch of different targets for each of these, but I'm going to pick out a couple that we can delve a little bit more deeply into. One really exciting thing about being a heritage professionals is that every single thing we do can help support the SDGs. And this of course starts with our education and outreach programs. It's so easy for us to support any one of the 17 SDGs by developing educational programs or exhibitions about the topic. So this is something that is really an easy win. And it's something that is incredibly important because if we can start educating our visitors about the SDGs. That can create the empathy and the cultural connection needed to get not only our institutions practicing more sustainability, but our communities and the general public. One of the other couple of things that's really important to think about in terms of in terms of education is that it's not just outward facing. It's also important to start thinking about opportunities within our own careers and our jobs. So, when we're talking about in our jobs, we're talking a little bit about what we do and why we do it. And this of course relates to education. It also relates to inclusion. How are we relating our collections? Do we know about our collections? Are we educating ourselves about where our collections came from? And are we communicating that to our audiences? This is the heart of decolonization. The other part that it's really important to think about is that words matter. And I know that you can see this big words matter book. It's something written by the Trope Museum here in Amsterdam. It's a really, really great resource. But this is a way that we can start thinking about sustainability in terms of the social aspects and especially accessibility and inclusion and equality. So how we communicate with each other and how we communicate with our public, which this is one of the education aspects of course, but this is also just looking internally at our own jobs and how we talk to our colleagues and how we talk to our audiences. So just educating ourselves about our collections, educating ourselves about how we are communicating our collections, and then educating ourselves about our audiences. Obviously activities and work. This is a really great one because this is related exactly to everything that we actually do. So some of the really easy ways for us to start incorporating sustainability into our activities and our work is to start asking questions about the tough issues. So policies regarding repatriation and decolonization. Another one that's really important is considering accession and deaccession strategies for sustainable growth of collections. I think that one of the things that's really important for us to realize in our capacities as museum professionals is that we actually have a lot more power than we think. I was doing a social sustainability professional development course, and one of my participants said, you know, Caitlin this this all sounds great but I'm a conservator so I don't really have the capacity to talk about decolonization like that's not my job. And I disagree with that. I think that is everyone's job and especially us as conservators, especially curators especially registers every single person has the responsibility to ask the questions about where our collections coming from. How are we portraying our collections. Are we talking about, are we portraying all points of view of history. So we're going to talk a little bit more about decolonization because that's also something that I think is really important to touch upon in terms of understanding how we can influence that in our own jobs. Before we go on to that though I do want to just touch on number six which is the accession and deaccession strategies. One thing that I think is incredibly important for us to think about is this mentality that you know, as museums we tend to collect things and this is wonderful. But I think it's really important for us to also start thinking about what we're doing with our collections, because if we just can continue to accession more and more items, then we have to continue to build larger and larger storage spaces. And the sustainability there we obviously can see is not is not a thing. Now 95% of our collections sit in storage, and we'll never see a display. And I think that that's really frustrating for a lot of people because this, this has to do a lot with not only the unsustainability of having to maintain all those collections in newly built storage facilities with climate condition control and all of these environmental impacts, but also it's very exclusive behavior. If we're looking at, you know, there's only 5% of our collection on display, then we're, we're taking away the interaction of 95% of our collections from our visitors. So how can we start thinking about the way that we are showing our collections, as well as the way that we're collecting in order to be more inclusive and more accessible. So back to this decolonization conversation. I was speaking with a colleague of mine in Hungary and she was saying well you know a lot of museums here might not think about decolonization because we were not a colonizing country. So it doesn't apply to us. And this is why decolonization might be a little bit of a misnomer. So decolonization is not just about a colony colonizer relationship. It's actually just about being open, transparent, and making sure that you're portraying all perspectives of history. So telling all sides of the stories. So this is a really interesting concept because you know, decolonization can mean different things to different people and there's different definitions that you can see on here. But I think that at the heart of it, what is being really, what's really important is that history is not told from a single singular perspective. It's an amazing program in the United Kingdom called decolonizing heritage and I'll have to send the link to everyone if they're interested but basically the idea is that they're working with school children to decolonize historic houses in England. And one of the one of the kids wrote a poem about this whole concept of decolonization. And it's simply read. It's simply read that, you know, I am a person, I have a history, he bought my history. And it was really powerful to think about, you know, somebody's history is being portrayed by someone else because they were bought as a slave, or their history was basically stolen from them. And so the way that the history from that particular story is being told is not from the perspective of everyone but it's from the perspective of the winner. Now we all know that that saying that the winner writes the history, but it's so important for us as museums to combat that to start thinking about the way that we portray history is not just from a singular perspective, it has to include everyone's perspective. And this is how we combat structural racism. It's by asking the tough questions, are we portraying history from all perspectives. And that's how we create more inclusion more understanding of different communities more understanding of different people and different ethnicities and different cultures, so that people can start realizing that you know it's not just one way, but there are multiple points of view. And that's how we open up our societies to learn from each other, and to start being more accepting of each other as well. And this is the power that we have as museums, and it's absolutely amazing to me how much we can influence our society through our culture. But this is really a key and this is something that I've heard not just from people within our sector but also from scientists. I'm a climate scientist on our board who says Caitlyn this is exactly the way that we need to be teaching people about about issues regarding climate change and all of the social injustices. It's through culture because that's how we connect people. So I want everyone to really make sure that they understand what kind of an influence and opportunity we have to do this. And this is really at the heart of what we do. And it's amazing to see how many incredible stories there are already about museums doing such great work with this. So I'm very inspired by everything that's being done and looking forward to continuing this journey. Another tough topic of course is repatriation. And I think that what's really important to think about when we talk about repatriation is that it's not up to necessarily us to decide what is being repatriated, but it's very important to understand that repatriation is a dialogue and that it's about listening. And I had a conversation with an indigenous woman in British Columbia a couple of months ago. And she said to me she said, you settlers need to stop trying to control everything. And that really shut me up. And I said, I'm here to listen tell me, you know, what what do I need to what do I need to hear. And she was saying, you know, if you're going to be start starting to talk about repatriation, you don't tell us how to do repatriation. We tell you how to do repatriation. We talk about this we have a dialogue about this. And I think that a lot of people feel that these conversations are really difficult to start because, you know, we don't want to offend anyone we don't want to say the wrong thing we don't want to put ourselves in a position where it's uncomfortable. But if we can just open up the conversation and just start by asking a question, you know, it's okay not to know all of the answers. It's okay to think. I don't know anything about decolonization. I don't know anything about repatriation, but that sounds like something we should be doing. The first thing is just ask a question, just say I don't know anything about it but I want to learn. Just tell me what what the best way to start this talk is, and then that's how we create dialogue and that's how we find resolutions. This is the indigenous repatriation handbook it was written by Nika Cullison, who's the executive director at the Haida Gwai Museum in British Columbia, and it's a phenomenal resource for understanding what repatriation is, and how to conduct it properly. I have a quick story that I wanted to share about repatriation gone wrong. There was a museum in the UK that had a collection from Peru, and they thought okay we're going to repatriate this so they sent it back to the Peruvian government, and the Peruvian government looked at this and said, we don't want these things and they sent them back to the UK. And then it was this whole backing and forthing of we don't want this and we don't want this and there was no dialogue there before but of course the museum thought that they were doing the right thing by sending it back to the rightful owners, but the Peruvian government didn't want it and so then there was this whole issue of who does it belong to and where does it go now. So once again, it's about starting with asking questions and then finding a conversation. There are also really great stories I had another colleague of mine, tell me a story about a book that they had in their collection. That was from an Israeli community, and they contacted the community and said you know we have this book. Do you guys want it back, and the community say you know what you're taking really good care of it and we actually really appreciate that. So hold on to it, but we would love access to it. And so what they did is they digitize the whole thing so that the community could have access to it when they want it. And then the museum could continue to take good care of it. So it was a win-win situation and everyone was happy, but it's just about opening up these dialogues and having these conversations. So inclusion is inclusion, and we've already touched a little bit about a little bit about this. You're starting to see the interconnectivity here I can tell. So it's really important that we continue to see this. So inclusion is not just about our, you know, the way that we treat each other as human beings, although obviously that's the most important part. It's also about being inclusive in our jobs, so as cultural heritage professionals, and also with our audiences. And we talked a little bit about accessibility as well. But I think that one of the things that's really, I don't want to say combative, but one of the things that is really important for us to think about is, you know, when we look around at our colleagues in our offices, it's, we have a certain demographic that we appeal to as cultural heritage professionals. We're not super inclusive. And there's a few different reasons for this. You know, I come from a conservation background and conservation is not necessarily something that everybody can do, or maybe it is, but we have this preconceived notion that it's not. So there's a lack of job security and cultural heritage. So it's not something that everyone has the luxury to do, because maybe they, they can't afford to have that job insecurity. And of course, you know, we don't get, we don't do what we do for the money. I mean, we certainly don't get paid a lot, and we're always overworked. And so it's not, it's not available to everyone. And I think that that's something that we really need to start thinking about in terms of being inclusive, not only in the way that we treat our audiences and, you know, inviting in diverse communities and creating more education outreach for different, for different demographics, but also in in our jobs what we're actually doing in terms of, in terms of our work. And I think that another thing that's, that's really interesting is, is ways that we can create more partnerships for inclusion and that of course is also within our own sector. So how can we get museums from other countries, other parts of the world to create more dialogue and share and share resources share knowledge share information and become become more communicative with within just our sector on a global scale. So I talked already a little bit about the lack of diversity in the field and the reasons for this. And of course, we can open this up by having more opportunities for job security. This is something I will be talking to the European Commission about what is it next week I think at the voices of culture. So how we can provide more job security that will hopefully open up more opportunities. So as we talked about earlier, you know, accessibility or collections. I have, I do have to say, I mean I've worked at some of the most incredible institutions and organizations around the world including the Vatican museums and the Getty Conservation gallery and, you know, I get backstage access to all of these places and it's, there's nothing more, you know, exciting than walking into, you know, the Vatican and opening a rope and going behind the scenes and being like by crowds and just being able to have that exclusive access to these phenomenal artworks that other people don't get to see. But other people don't get to see them so this is actually being quite exclusive and we have a very exclusive job as conservators were the only ones who are allowed to touch these objects thank you very much, which I understand there's the preservation aspect to it. And this is of course, you know, part of our jobs is to protect these objects, but this goes back to these questions of what are we doing and who are we doing it for. Are we protecting objects for ourselves. Are we protecting objects for future generations. Are we doing what we're doing for the objects are we doing it for people. All of our objects are sitting in storage facilities their entire lives because that's in their best preservation. Who's actually benefiting from this. So this is also this idea of doing good without doing harm. And this also goes into the exclusivity factor this goes into the inclusivity factor this goes into the, why do we do what we do. Our jobs will get into this and our community of course this is another thing that it's going to become even more relevant now. So, in the original SDGs 11.4 literally says conserve protect and house our cultural and natural heritage. So we're good right we've, that is literally our job so that's really wonderful because we don't have to worry about doing any of the other stuff right well, we'll go back to what Henry said and doing good without doing harm so I suppose we do need to start thinking about that. But the good news is that this is something that is really easy for us to tangible eyes and to say like this is what our jobs are and this is in the SDGs. So I think it's really wonderful and super important for us to celebrate the successes and to really be proud of where we are upholding the SDGs I think the most accessible point of acting sustainably is to recognize where we're already doing it and build on those successes. So I can congratulate every single one of you for fulfilling SDG 11.4 in our jobs, I think that that's incredibly important to be proud of that and to build on that so how can we do it better. And then of course community this is the this is the other side of 11 and I think that this is something that's becoming more and more relevant. So we have no restrictions with COVID with all the uncertainties. We have a new role to play as institutions. We're no longer going to be hosting. Well, I mean we'll see but it's kind of my hope that we will no longer be hosting blockbuster touring exhibitions that are just going, you know, from Australia to Dubai to Paris to New York to LA, but actually we're going to have to start and we're no longer serving, you know, the tourists that fly in from all of those places. So we're going to start having to rethink our roles here, and we're going to start having to reconnect with our local communities. So how can we do this, and this is really interesting because what is our role within our local community. Are we listening to our community members. Are we engaging with their wants and needs. One of the one of the ideas on here was opening your space for community gatherings and events. It's really nice to have, you know, a safe space for open dialogue to start listening and creating and creating a conversation about what local community needs are, and how we as the museums can actually start serving those. And of course, other parts about this have to do with outreach and engagement, but I love this. This is a quote from our social sustainability director p ed fist and she wrote that museums can create a lasting relationship with the community through dialogue community building and collaborative practice. And I think that just hits the nail on the head because what we're looking for is, you know, obviously like there's there's the financial component we are, we are businesses I suppose but I don't think that's why any of these are related to museum studies or cultural heritage. It's not because we wanted to be businessmen and you know, all about the bottom line and how many people can we get in the door. But it's because we care about our heritage and we care about people, and we care about making those connections and, you know, creating those experiences that are really powerful. I mean, I got into conservation because when I was nine years old I walked into the loo for the first time and I saw all of these ancient Greek and Roman statues and I was just absolutely in awe. And I wanted to conserve those so that there was another little girl in 100 years who could have the same experience. And I think that that's really a powerful message is you know, why do we do what we do. And, you know, this also of course has to do with how we treat our local communities. It's really just a museum that brings in tourists and has these big blockbuster shows and ignores the neighbor across the street. So this is something that we really need to start thinking about especially in light of the global pandemic, and who our new audiences are going to be. Because if we have a lot less tourists coming in, we're going to have to start shifting gears and start thinking about how we can get our neighbors across the street to come in our doors. So, I think it's really an amazing opportunity for us because this is obviously something that I was touting even last year before the pandemic, but now it's more relevant than ever. How can we become relevant to our local communities, and how can we best serve their needs. Okay, so we have just a couple more here and then we're going to get into some bigger picture questions. Number 12 is consumption circularity. This is really about the environmental impact. So I think that it's really quite prevalent for us, especially myself as a conservator I don't know how many conservators we have here today, but it's really tangible to understand waste. I mean, that's actually how I got into this whole thing when I was a master's student a million years ago, walking by the trash can look down, thought was full of, you know, disposable nitrile gloves and thought well that's really wasteful can we do something. And waste is a really easy entry point to sustainability in an environmental aspect because it's so easy to see you can, you know, you can see all the, all the gloves in the trash you can, you know, the piles of plastic zot are piling up everywhere it's just very easy to understand what the impact is. You know we've all seen the plastic soup in the ocean. So it's something that's really tangible. And one of the really interesting things about what we're doing is that the way that we're currently doing our exhibitions, for example the way that we're doing packaging and shipping, there are better solutions for it. So I'm really excited to start talking with you guys about what some of those solutions are going to be will be delving into that a little bit more later. But I think two very easy concepts that we can think about when we're thinking about wasting materials and unfortunately we don't have too much time to dive into these but I just wanted to go over the five hours, which are refuse, reduce, reuse, repurpose, recycle, and just iterate that those need to be done in that order, recycle is almost a cop out so don't immediately go to that but go through the five hours and their hierarchy. If you have materials you first ask do I need to use it. How much do I need to use. Can I reuse it instead of using a new one. Can I repurpose it and find something else I can do with it, and then can I recycle it. And then the other thing is a life cycle analysis and I'm going to give you just the briefest explanation of this but there's more information if you'd like in the resources at the end. The LCA is basically a way of examining a material to think about where it comes from and where it goes. When you pick up a material and you're looking at it, you know you think about the use of it. But you don't think about, you know, how was this made. What were the raw materials that were used to produce this. What was the, you know, carbon footprint of the factory where it was made. What was the carbon footprint of the travel it had to get from that factory to here, and then you know what happens to it after it's done and I put in the trash can obviously by it's done, but actually what happens to it afterwards doesn't have to be transported somewhere in the process of disposing of it is incinerated. If it does go to a recycling place is it downcycled instead of upcycled or recycled. Is it something that can produces a lot of carbon emissions by having to process the material and make something new out of it. So, a life cycle analysis is basically, you might have also heard of cradle to cradle. It's an analysis of the impact the carbon footprint impact of the entire life cycle of something so not just its use phase, but where does it come from and where does it go. So we can start thinking about that in terms of our material consumption as well. And, you know, this just goes into a little bit of showcasing where we're using a lot of materials. This is me pouring a very toxic biocide over a stone sculpture. There aren't better ways to do that by the way so that's really exciting but I think that we all know that they're in especially in conservation but also of course in museums in our packaging and shipping there's a lot of material waste that we can start thinking about better ways to to mitigate those issues. Number 13 is climate change. For a lot of people, especially in Europe. This is a really easy entry point for sustainability. When you talk about sustainability, a lot of people immediately go to climate change. We've already talked a little bit about the energy consumption of our institutions. We've talked a lot about our waste and materials and how that impacts the climate. So, and of course we've already talked about our education and outreach programs. So it's really a wonderful way for us to start thinking about what our impact is, and how we can start mitigating it, as well as how we can start educating our public about climate change. I'm not going to go into too many details because unfortunately we just don't have time, but lighting HVAC systems and art transportation are kind of the three biggest issues when it comes to carbon emissions. So, we'll talk about some solutions later for solving these, but unfortunately we don't have too much time to get into those right now. So the last one I want to talk about before I wrap things up here and ask some open ended questions for everyone is working together. And this is my personal favorite, because when it comes to sustainability, I think the most important things to realize or to think about is that you're not alone. And you don't have to do all of it yourself. So partnerships are absolutely essential to everything that we do. I talked in the very beginning about the fact that sustainability, one of the bottlenecks for for achieving sustainability in our sector is that maybe we don't have the expertise. I don't know about you guys but I was not trained in sustainability when I was an art conservator. That was something I did afterwards. And it's because we haven't quite put those together yet, but we're doing that now. And the great thing is that if we want to solve a problem. There are people out there who have the expertise. So let's find those partners, let's find those allies and those supporters to actually start finding solutions that are applicable to us as cultural heritage professionals. And it's so important to understand that, you know, this is a this is a reciprocal relationship. I mean, there are so many ways that we as a network of museums can actually start supporting and promoting sustainability, and there are partners out there who need us. So how can we advocate for those partners as well. And how can they help us to find solutions for ourselves. So this is a really, really powerful thing to do is, don't be afraid to ask for help. I know that you're not alone in this. And let's find ways that we can support each other and work together to achieve our goals. So I wanted to very quickly touch on coven we talked a little bit about how coven is affecting basically what our, what our institutions are dealing with, but this is just also another, another example of the intersectionality of these issues, because COVID is disproportionately affecting places with higher pollution. And it's disproportionately affecting what they call map is the most effective people in places. And basically, these facts are that, you know, obviously if you live in an area where there's higher pollution levels, you're more susceptible to COVID and you're more susceptible, you're more likely to die from it. And that's because of course there's more pollution in the air, which causes your respiratory system to be to be inhibited. So it's really important to start looking at the social justice aspects and the environmental justice aspects, as one, because they really are you cannot talk about the burning of the Amazonia without talking about indigenous rights. It's very clearly linked and as I mentioned before, this is something we're seeing more and more of as as this year progresses. So I just wanted to wrap up with just a couple of key points to summarize some of the some of the ways that we can support sustainability through the through the SDGs. Education and outreach are obviously our biggest strong points. I mean, every single SDG can be supported by our educational programming and our exhibitions. It's so important for us to realize the capacity that we have an influence that we have on our society, and what opportunities we have to really influence and affect that change. Also of course partnerships are key, as we already talked about it's not your responsibility alone to solve all the world's problems, but together we can make a really huge impact. And of course the aspects of environmental sustainability, thinking about the LCA is thinking about the five Rs thinking about our carbon footprint. And then of course, the social aspects of promoting accessibility, inclusion, diversity, equality, and just common And I don't think that I'm preaching to anyone who needs to hear that, but I'm just saying that I think that we can really celebrate the fact that we do that and we do that well and continue to promote that because that resonates out to our communities and to our societies at large. So I wanted to very quickly give a little introduction, we've talked a little bit about some of the, some of the ways that we can start working together and we're going to be launching key futures in January of next year. And I'm really excited to be putting this program out for everyone. It's going to include accreditation and certification for sustainable practices, as well as training our key books are your how to step by step guides on actions you can do to be more sustainable. They are written specifically for cultural heritage professionals by experts in the field in collaboration with cultural heritage professionals. So we've translated all of that jargon into something that's really accessible and easy to follow. So I really hope that those will be helpful for all of you in achieving your sustainability journey. If you'd like more information about key futures, please do let me know we're going to be doing a big launch of that, as I said in January so really looking forward to joining you guys in your sustainability journey and seeing how we can support you together. So, as I said, lots of resources here. Very happy to share the slide with anyone who would like to follow up with some of the things that we've talked about today. And I think I'm a few minutes over already so I'm going to wrap up there. And thank you so much and really looking forward to hearing your questions and hopefully answering some of them. So, Liz may want to come back on and absolutely. Yeah. And first, just let me say thank you so much for your wonderful presentation. You know, I think there's just there's so much value in your ability to really bring in these these massive, you know, big picture items but then also bring it down to some really practical steps for us. Thank you so much for that you know I'm really glad that you brought in the social justice aspect because there there are such strong connections between social justice climate sustainability and culture but I feel that too often these are kind of the afterthought when really you know that these are core things that connect to one another. And yeah, and also, you know, I would say to throughout the conference and there's been a lot of mention of you know, multi-perspectivity and this transition of purpose from objects to people. So I'm glad that you brought that up as well because I think that's really embedded in our community purpose and if we are doing things for our community you know our actions are going to be required to, you know, have sustainable actions there with them. So, thank you so much for that. I mean, I could go on. Yeah, you and I can go on about this for hours I think. Yeah, but I would of course like to bring in some questions here from from the chat. Let's see. Let's see. So, when we have, I guess we're looking for a solution about storage what we can do with storage if we have, you know, 95% of items are in storage. And then, and sometimes we can only display a small amount of them. So, what, what are some solutions that you would put forward in terms of dealing with that storage issue that you brought up earlier. Yeah, absolutely. And it's, it's, it's a tough one. I mean, it's not like we can snap our fingers and have, you know, larger museums. But I think that there are some ways that we can start thinking about about about doing this in a more sustainable way and there's kind of three elements here. One of them is this idea of two larger collections. So maybe what the first step is to start thinking about deaccessioning strategies. And, you know, how do we evaluate what would actually be important for our collections and maybe ways that we can start deaccessioning and, you know, we can also make some money off of that. I actually know in this is a funny story but I studied in Italy for three years and one of the things we have to study there as part of our conservation is the legislation. And they have a little loophole in their system in Italy where basically and if I'm, if I'm misquoting this please forgive me but I just thought this is a really interesting idea. If there's someone who sees an object that they love they can buy it from the government. As long as they can prove that they could keep it in better conditions than it's currently in that they have a conservator who will inspect it once a year, and that once a year they have they open it up to the public enjoyment. And secondly, they have to open their house and offer everyone to come in and see it. And it's technically still owned by the state, but the individual person actually has the opportunity to keep it in their house. And I just thought that that was a really out of the box idea. But I think that we need maybe need some more creative thinking when it comes to what we do with our collections. The first step to that would be to develop a deaccessioning strategy and start thinking about, you know, what, what our values of our collections are and what collections we actually need to be keeping. I think the second part of that is to, you know, maybe start thinking about opening up our storage facilities to to be more accessible to the public. I know that there are a lot of institutions that do public tours of their storage facilities. So that's a great idea to tackle that accessibility issue. And then of course the other component of this is the carbon footprint. And if we're constantly building larger and larger facilities with very strict climate conditions. That's a problem. So one of the ways that we can start combating that actually two things that we can do. One is we can start looking at more sustainable sort of storage facilities. The storage facility solution is a great one that's completely carbon neutral storage facilities and I know a few, a few companies that actually do that. And then the other one of course is to adopt less stringent climate control conditions so either visa green protocol or ash ray CCI CCM and GCI have all put out less stringent climate condition regulations as well. Or to start doing microclimates instead of large scale climate control. So I think just starting to look at from a social perspective and also from an environmental perspective there are a lot of a lot of great ways for us to start looking at solutions there. Yeah, that's, that's great. I mean, there's there's such a wide range there I guess and I mean just the basics of you know redesigning your structures and whatnot. I'm still mentioning these, these, you know, new community ownership programs I mean that just goes to show that there's, there's so many opportunities for creative solutions here when when we sit down and we think about you know these tough problems. So, of course, no and I just just to mention that you know this is one of the things that I always am such a proponent about is the fact that I think that this is why we can do this is because we have such as cultural heritage professionals we have such a unique perspective on the world. I mean, combining science and history and culture and art and it's just, we are so creative that I think that we can really solve these issues. So I'm, yeah, I highly encourage all of you to think outside the box and find some solutions and let's do them and let's do them together. Yeah, it's taking ownership and being creative and collaborative, you know, that's excellent. Yes, let's go to another question here. I mean this is kind of just an asking for a bit more detail really about your forthcoming cultural heritage strategic developmental goals and how museums might use them. And I was just saying that I wonder if museums might find the existing SDGs a bit unwieldy as there are so many of them. So, yes, you could say a few more words about those because I also found them to be quite inspired. Yeah, absolutely. I think that you know when it comes to the SDGs, I find them also to be a little bit accessible sometimes. But I think that what's what's really the difference of having the cultural heritage version of that was that the targets would actually be something that people could feel like I can actually do that. So as opposed to, you know, eradicating poverty and all of its forms, and all of these, all of the political jargon. You want to know how to use the SDGs. There's a great book by Henry McGee. It's called museums and the SDGs. You can download it from his website curating tomorrow. But and he gives a really great more policy level, larger picture idea of how museums can support the SDGs and how the SDGs need museums in order to be really promoted. I think that the idea behind the cultural heritage goals so the translation version is just to make people basically people like me feel like they could actually do something. So you know if you wanted to, it makes them feel like it's actually something that's related to my work. So, I hope that that is a good answer. You know, I think that the idea is just that we can all kind of collaborate and put an ideas about ways that are targets that we as a sector can feel are achievable. So, you know, making sure that all of our storage facilities are open for public or something like that in order to to to fulfill the inclusion goals. So how do do we as a sector promote and support the SDGs and I think that that's kind of the ideas, as setting targets as a sector that we can help achieve. Yeah, yeah, great. So transitioning from that political jargon to some cultural jargon. More our language. Great. Um, so I was wondering if you could share with us, perhaps some of the common occurrence challenges that you've witnessed as you've had, you know, conversations about sustainability with cultural organizations of different sizes like our. Are there some that come up regularly. Oh man, yeah. It's interesting because there's there's the institutional level and then there's the personal level. I think that you know I mean the first question I always get. And this is the most common question I get is, you know, Caitlin I'd like to be more sustainable but I don't know how and I don't know where to begin and I'm just a conservator I'm just a curator and so I don't have any decision making power in my institution so what do I do. That's that's all that was actually my question as well, you know when I wanted to be more sustainable as a conservator but I felt completely powerless to do anything about it. So I think that that's basically the brunt of the work that I do is trying to figure out ways that we can empower everyone who wants to do something to be able to do something. That's what the key books are aimed at that is what key futures is aimed at but also of course the on the institutional level. You know, what's really important for me is that people realize that they do have the capacity to make real big change, even if they are just a conservator, or just curator which I don't think is just in any, in any way, shape or form. In terms of kind of the bigger picture ideas you know the big topics of conversation always go back to art transportation, packaging and shipping, lighting, age back systems. And I think what's really interesting and this is one of the places where I think that kind of creating more lines of communication within our sector but on a global level can actually be really helpful, because there are a lot of. I was I was giving a presentation and Copenhagen and I come CC a couple of years ago, and someone came up to me afterwards I was talking about you know more sustainable climate conditions and, you know, be so and all of those, all of those things. And someone came up to me afterwards and she said you know Caitlyn we're already doing all the things that you suggested, not because we have to but because we only have access to energy three hours a day. And she was at the National Museum in the Philippines, and she said, because you know we just don't have age back systems and we don't have energy to control it we do passive solutions and we have all of these really sustainable ways of maintaining our collections. And I think that it's what's really interesting is that we need to start thinking about that. You know, preventive conservation is a very hot topic right now and this these ideas of climate control or something that people are starting to question in some places like is it necessary in terms of, you know, these collections maybe have already lasted for 1000 years without climate control so are we maybe damaging them by putting in them in climate control when they're more used to this condition and also, you know that goes to different geographical locations I mean, the original, some of the original research for climate conditions was, you know, made in the 70s in the UK, and then that's being implemented in, you know, desert Australia. So it's, I think that just starting to question a little bit, why we're doing what we're doing is kind of the first, the first step to tackling some of these bigger issue questions. So I got off in a little bit of a tangent there but I do hope that it. Other tangents are always welcome here. But I will. Let's see just just a couple more questions here because we have so many great comments and actually some really interesting different programs being shared in the chat as well, which is always great. There's one that all of these these fields that we've been discussing over the past hour, you know, environmental sustainability and decolonization repatriation inclusiveness that these are complex and often calling for legal or engineering human sciences knowledge. And the question is, is this a question of ethics for us as museums professionals to search for external expertise here. That way we can provide our communities a complete experience with strong scientific and academic knowledge on those complex topics. So basically, not only the place for open dialogue in the museum but also relying on the experts to not oversimplify any of these topics. Oh, that's a fabulous question. I mean, yeah, I think I think that this goes back to the idea of partnerships and expertise and you know we don't have to have all the answers ourselves. But it's imperative that we bring in the experts who do know the answers you know we we need to make sure that we are obviously communicating information that's correct. You know, when we're talking about exhibitions on climate change, we're not necessarily creating it ourselves if we're not experts on climate change. And I do think that that is an ethical aspect is is to bring in is to you know form the partnerships with people who can give us the right information. You know, and that's that goes back to what I said earlier about like we're not alone in this and this is not something we have to do by ourselves I think it's imperative that we work together and outside the sector and with with people who you know can can give us the reliable information that we can transmit to our communities. So that's, that's one of the benefits of being a museum is that people trust us. So when you walk into a museum you don't question whether or not that's a Rembrandt on the wall, you just take you know it says it is so it is. And that's the opportunity that we have because people do trust us we are, you know, inherently trusted centers of learning and knowledge so when people walk in they know that what they're reading is going to be a fact. It's not politicized it's not fake news it's not agenda prone, it's real. And that's why we have such great power, and of course, great power comes great responsibility so we do have to do this in a way that is. Yeah, I know. We're just going to throw it in there. But yeah I think that I think that's essential absolutely absolutely a really, really excellent question. Yeah, no, it's important to have that trust and it's definitely important to know that we can lean on each other like you said we're we're not alone in this. Yeah. So, before we wrap up. I would ask you to do a bit of technical finangling because we have someone who would like to see the resources slide. Once more, if you wouldn't mind sharing that. Absolutely. And I can actually also I'm happy to I don't know if there's a way to do this but I'm very happy to share this with anyone who wants it. You can always email me info at keyculture.com and I'd be very happy to share any of this with everybody. Great. And that's also actually probably going to be somewhat of a similar answer to the next question in here that will be the last question is we have someone wondering how they can work with you. Oh, that's so great. Thanks. We always welcome everyone who wants to join the join the team. Yeah, just send send me an email info at key culture.com I'll go to the next one it's right there. Yeah, I'd love to love to bring anyone on board who's who wants to help out you know we've got a phenomenal team we've got over 40 volunteers from all over the world from Hong Kong to Rwanda to Brazil to Canada, and always looking to build more and build the, yeah, build the force and thank you. I'm really excited. Thank you for meeting you. That's great. And yeah, I will just say thank you once more, Caitlin. Thank you so much for diving into this massive and massively important topic. It's always a pleasure to to chat with you and hear from from your wealth of knowledge on this so thank you so much. Absolutely my pleasure and thank you so much for inviting me it was really wonderful to get to to get to share this with everyone and of course to get to talk with you. Okay, great. Thank you so much. All right. So, yeah with with that, we will go ahead and end our afternoon session. That doesn't mean of course that we're completely finished here we have one more day full of fun conference activities. Tomorrow morning, 950 is the entry time starting as always on time at 10 central European time will be our covert discussion session. Unfortunately this, or fortunately, this session is already fully booked. But following our covert session we do have a webinar which if you have not already registered to this. The link will be posted in the chat so you can still join us for this at 1130 tomorrow. And that is the that will also be followed by our European Museum cooperation platform, which will be some more presentations from some of our project partners. So, yeah. Oh, and of course, how could I forget. We do have a social session followed in the evening, where you can join myself and our communications officer Rebecca for a pub quiz and a bit of networking roulette, and this will be our more casual sessions so it's going to be mics on cameras on. We want to see your smiling faces so we hope you will join us for that tomorrow. And yeah with that I wish you all a wonderful rest of your afternoon. Thank you again. Thank you.