 I'm very happy to be here, I'm Gara Njagodin from Tallinn, Estonia from the Museum of Occupations and Freedom and first of all I would really like to thank the Sibelius Hall for hosting us here and of course the staff of NEMO for organizing and putting together this excellent conference. Thank you, it's been a lovely, lovely day so far. For once I can feel really good by coming to a conference and sustainable in coming to a conference as coming from Tallinn I only needed to take a short ferry and train ride. Yet at the same time I'm standing here with my papers in a paperless sustainability conference because I'm exactly the person who goes in the morning into the hotel reception and asks maybe you can print out six pages for me because otherwise I'm lost. So are we really sustainable only in the amount that is convenient to us and are the museums sustainable only in the amount that is convenient to the museums? Today's second panel part of the problem doesn't really argue that there isn't enough knowledge in the field. Mostly there is not enough action or is there enough action? How can we lead as museums this change in the society that is so evident and needed? Today there's been already a lot of talk and examples on maybe really, really need to unlearn a few things or really flip our perspectives, really change the way we think. So I have changed a lot of my notes within that first part of the day and it really left me wondering that what is it what we can really flip because we as museum people we work with national heritage and heritage and materials that belong to our nations. And if the nation owns that heritage then it's more actually for me a question of trust that do we also trust our people? So if you really need to flip perspectives then why don't we hand the role of being a caregiver a keeper of that heritage also to our people? So could one of the ways to really flip our perspectives be that our heritage doesn't necessarily need to be in museums? I wouldn't mind having a few nice paintings at my home in my living room I could take good care of them and I believe a lot more people could do that. Is this the way we really need to start rethinking about how we take care of our heritage and our collections? So there's going to be a lot of different interesting discussions here today about how the collections should be preserved how and why we should be building new museums or how we should transform our organizations and my job here is just to provoke some questions and see that we do get this discussion going especially now after lunch. But I'm honoured to welcome now on stage Stefan Simon trained as heritage scientist. He's been working since 2005 as a director of the Rutger and Research Laboratory with the National Museums Berlin. Stefan has prioritized the advancements of sustainable conservation strategies triggered by global climate change and the Green Museum debate. He calls himself a pessimist but I think that this is a reflection of his deep concern that we are not doing enough and the time is running out. And in his presentation Simon will argue that climate crisis has arrived in our European museums and that it is about time for museums in Europe to finally look up and realign their priorities. So the floor is yours please. Thank you very much Karin and also thank you to the organizers for bringing me here in a quite unsustainable way by plane from Berlin because the train connection takes like 38 hours plus. I was flying in one hour and 15 minutes. Well let me start by saying that it's 30 years more than 30 years since the World Summit of Rio de Janeiro was convened in order to fight dangerous human interference with the climate system by stabilizing carbon emissions. And also eight years after the Paris Climate Accord was signed which by now has been joined by 194 nations plus the European Union a legally binding accord. And yeah as Karin said look up it's about us not about the climate. First of all we in the cultural sector must understand that the climate crisis is real that it has already begun in parts of the world and is claiming not only in my home state of Bavaria in this 10 minutes hail event in August but literally all the roofs were smashed of Benedict Boyan including the ancient windows in the monastery and the roof. So it has already begun in parts of the world and it's claiming victims more and more every day. Secondly it's ourselves and nobody else who caused it and it's especially us in the global north. It is also unprecedented as a crisis and it's a very serious threat to our civilization around the globe and I'm illustrating this with pictures from Germany and abroad for the last one or two years. The last thing which we have to understand is that the climate crisis will change everything we are familiar with and will not stop at the doorsteps of our museums. The storms which we experienced end of June in Berlin and this photo got kind of viral cost damage especially water damage and almost a dozen of our museums we have 17 almost a dozen of our museums in the Prussian Heritage Foundation. So could we perhaps ask ourselves what is worse for museums? Climate change or climate activism? Once we understand this we can ask ourselves what can we do in the museums? Maybe it's more important to make use of the potential of museums as an agorah to debate together about this most important challenge of our time. Speak not only but also to climate activists as we did that in summer in Berlin. The art critic Waldemar Januszczak is credited with the quote that the new museum buildings is not longer a boom, it's an orgy. Apparently more museums were built in the still young 21st century than in the 19th and 20th century combined and every year around 700 new museums are created in China alone. If we were just talking about the museum building spree it's worth mentioning that it takes many decades until a new museum even if it's built according to the platinum lead or briam or in Germany we have the BNB standard can be operated with the lowest amount of energy. It takes many decades until it catches up with the reused old building in terms of emissions. Too much of carbon dioxide is produced when burning cement, melting steel, alumina glass and all the logistics connected to a new building. This so-called grey energy is difficult to estimate in the long term because the non-renewable energy content of repair and replacement materials is difficult to predict how energy intensive will be the production of building materials in a few decades which are contributions of grey energy that arise during demolition and disposal and is there a model for an appropriate quantification especially for historic buildings? There's many question marks and as time increases operational energy becomes more important. Strategies to reduce energy consumption throughout the life cycle should be therefore based on design considerations that significantly reduce the building operational energy. On the other hand, as energy consumption for operations tends to fall the grey energy again will become more important in the overall view of the life cycle of buildings. If half of the greenhouse gases are generated during the construction demolition and operation of buildings as Max Page from Boston is saying efforts to maintain existing buildings will become a cornerstone of any sustainability strategy. So the reason of the high carbon footprint of museums is hidden in their cellars and roofs. It is the complex air conditioning that is traditionally based much more on what is technically feasible and less on conservation needs. My colleague Wukasz will elaborate on that in his statement so I can skip this and continue. Let me only illustrate one particularly absurd feature of air conditioning. In many museums we heat when it's hot and we cool when it's freezing outside. On the right you have a typical sawtooth curve for a single set point temperature control in museums. According to studies we did together with Wukasz Bratasz and the J.L.Piba Museum six years ago approximately 20-30% of energy can be saved simply by allowing for a drift between two set point temperatures. We build and we are continually expanding our own institute's database for benchmarking energy consumption of museums thanks to the contribution of many of your members. This enables you to classify your energy consumption in national and international comparison. Well over the recent years the median, the average drop below 300 kilowatt hours per square meter and year. But you can see in this diagram that the climate neutral museum is supposed to not use more than 30 and 40 maybe 50 kilowatt hours per year. So we still have really way to go. Let's take a look at Mies van der Rohe's Neue National Gallery in Berlin, an architectural icon. After its renovation two years ago it consumes approximately 30% more energy than before. This is something you don't hear about. You hear that this renovation is collecting architectural awards. You don't hear that the cooling energy at the Kulturforum where we have several museums, not just this one, has increased by almost 50% since we ran this museum again. So the Neue National Gallery can be credited with opening a few years before the publication of the first report of the Club of Rome 1972 or the first oil crisis 1973. At that time limitless consumption of resources was considered a viable option. Well we don't do that anymore, do we? But has really anything changed? Just next to the Neue National Gallery. And so on many plans for new museum buildings around the world, not just in Germany. Many of these plans seem strangely fallen out of time. The German weekly der Freitag attested to this most climate hostile building of our history which is currently being built. The charm of a haspre with fluorinated hydrocarbons from the 1970s. Again and again when I pass by and I look at the slowly progressing construction works at the Kulturforum I ask myself about the logic of this failure. We know that we will not be able to operate this house as planned. We know that we cannot afford it. We know that the best new museum that can be built today for all the reasons described is the one that we decide actually not to build. When in 1967 the Neue National Gallery in almost finished the construction work of the National Library on the opposite side of the Kulturforum just begins. There are still many areas open, open fields where we today have the painting gallery, the Arts and Crafts Museum, the prints and drawings, the musical instruments museum, the Iberia American Institute. The last piece of green surface at the Kulturforum in the middle is now being filled with concrete. We know that we should not have sealed this. What we notice instead trees in flower pots which are symbolic for our understanding of how we understand the ecological transformation of our museums. This is not going to work. What is clear is that the solutions for the crisis will not be found in the same unsustainable models that have put the planet in ever more acute danger in recent decades. So what can we do, the classification of real climates for example, that we can currently offer to all museums, archives, free of charge. We evaluate room climatic conditions according to standards and recommendations such as Aschre, the German Museumspund and Bissel. I can give you a little glimpse into the project in progress after we carried out about 100 evaluations. Most museums so far fall onto the Aschre Class C. Some into B, none so far in the A classes, which so many museums believe that they're actually in. More than half of the evaluated cases are from Germany, mainly from museums with a majority actually being air conditioned. There is a clear and stunning discrepancy between the existing recommendations and the climate reality in our museums. In less than 10% of the case studies so far, humidity fluctuation for example could be kept consistently below 10% a day. In many cases it's hard to control climate even within the corridors that were supposedly expanded too widely in the recommendation. What does this mean for us? It means we need to be honest and transparent about our climate conditions and energy consumption. We should participate in benchmarking efforts like this one, which you can by the way access via the QR code. While we have achieved a change in consciousness, we heard that today in the climate debate. It's time to better recognize the urgency and to apply risk management tools to all the questions of museum sustainability. And at the end of the day, and it's just a personal experience, don't fall for greenwashing. Greenwashing is just adding insult to injury. It's about protecting us, the people, and not the climate. So I want to finish with the ABC method, which I learned from my colleagues at New Scotland Yard because a big part of my work is devoted to authenticity in art. So the ABC and forgeries and fakes and art crime. The ABC method means assume nothing, believe nobody, and check everything. Thank you very much. Stay here. Thank you, Stefan. Before I let you off and give floor to the next presentation, I have one question to you. I think I heard from a lot this audience, this sound that you would like to, you reacted, you responded to his arguments. There was this kind of willingness to react and do something. There are people who are striking against climate change and some of the museums aren't really having good experiences, on the other hand, with those people who strike for the climate change. Is there anything we should learn from them? Should we collaborate with climate change activists so that we could feel that we also are doing actually something, or we can use their voice? It's not an easy question. I think it's not so easy to reply to this. I think personally that we must engage with climate activists because they see things much more clearer than my own ministry of culture or the politicians, or not even speak about the fossil fuel industry. I think listening to them is a good way. I do not share many of the methods they are applying in their actions in our museums. I learned that they are not targeting museums. They are using us as a stage in Germany. But my experience is that the moment they were gluing themselves to the first paintings in Berlin in last August, I wrote to my boss and I said, can we just, you know, I have connections to these people. I think they are young people. They are fighting for democracy. They are fighting for the survival of the civilisation. Shouldn't we talk to them over a coffee? The first reaction of my boss was, you know, this is really dangerous because if people find out that I'm meeting with them, it would be difficult for me in the German community that I talk to them. But then after a few months I got this short message from my director and said, Stefan, I think now I want to meet them. And we met and we discussed and we don't have to share all the views. But personally I'm convinced we should always keep in mind that maybe in a few decades our children and our grandchildren, they may be really grateful to these people, whatever they did disturbing our world now. I think if we are very lucky, our grandchildren can be happy and grateful to them. Thank you. Our next presenter will join us online, virtually. I hope you can already see and hear us, Lukasz Pratacz. From Poland, from the Jersey Harbour Institute of Catalysis and Surface Chemistry and Polish Academy of Sciences. Professor Lukasz Pratacz has for many years headed the research laboratory at the National Museum in Krakow and is currently the head of the Cultural Heritage Research Group at the Polish Academy of Sciences. And his presentation, Be Honest, Objects Survived Centuries in Unstable Environments, debates about the more responsible use of energy in museums. So the three distinct questions to raise are what do we want, know and can. So the floor is yours, Lukasz, if you are here. Yes, thank you very much. So good afternoon, everyone. Karan, thank you very much for the nice introduction and I would like also to thank the organizer for inviting me to this important conference and giving me possibility to present my research results but also research results of other colleagues. And the research results I will talk about are related to the climate control in museums and in general in memory institutions. In general, the decision-making process about the climate control in memory institution is complex one. As you can see here on this scheme, you have several stages and of course the scheme was developed and proposed by the ASHRAE American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Reconditioning Engineers who designed and proposed the guidelines for museums, libraries, galleries and archives. And they are the most influential environmental guidelines for museums globally. And as you can see here, the process is really complex. A lot of stakeholders are involved on each stage but when we look from the, let's say, general point of view we can distinguish there are three main, oh my, there are three main, sorry, buttons doesn't work. There are three main areas of question. First of all, we need to understand what do we want and this is related, of course, related, of course, to the context, to the mission of the institution, to the strategy but also to the regional, national or international policies as well as to the financial issues. Then other important questions are related. What do we know? So when we want to evaluate, when we want to design the climate control to prevent risk, we need to understand how this risk are related to environment. And the third important question is related. What do we can? Because when we develop some options to prevent certain risks, even if they are theoretically very good, not all of them, they are feasible to be applied in the news and contacts. That's very obvious, I think. And during my short presentation, I just want to focus your attention on this question. What do we know actual about the risk? And there is several things which we know. We know, as Stefan mentioned, that active climate control in museums is an expensive thing. Typically, the energy consumption normalized to the square meter of the museum varies between 10 and 1,000 kilowatt hours per square meter a year, which means just simply that when the small museums decide to install active climate control, adivac system is very likely that the energy bill will increase several times if not the orders of magnitude. We know also that in the buildings which are using adivac system, 95% of energy use is related to control of temperature and humidity. Lighting and other appliances, this is a small part. This is the third conclusion. Is rather my personal experience from the institution I work in is that cause of the temperature and relative humidity control is typically comparable or higher than salary cost of all conservators so people who take her for the collection. So which is why I think the discussion about sustainability in museums without optimizing adivac system is how to say insufficient at least. We also understand in general the climate related risk in the museums and we can distinguish three major types of the risk. One is the biological risk which is related to fungal growth and insect infestation. The second risk is related to various types of chemical degradation of objects and finally a risk of mechanical damage caused by instabilities of temperature or relative humidity. And again when we control environment and control variations, this is again the most expensive part. So definitely as we know and as we can see on the historical object we see the impact of the unstable environment. Definitely there is a risk of mechanical damage but I would like to convince you that this risk of mechanical damage are frequently and often overestimated. Why it is so? First of all because the objects were stored for decades, not for centuries in unstable uncontrolled climates. First adivac system were installed in the museums at the beginning of 20th century but in developed country in leading institution, in leading museums they become common in 50s and 60s but still many museums, smaller museums or museums in the historical buildings they don't have any age back system. How looks the environment, temperature and relative humidity in such buildings without potential for climate control? You can see here on this slide which shows temperature and relative humidity variation in the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa the Ferrari in Venice which houses one of the most important panel painting by Titian, the famous Asunta. And as you can see the temperature the temperature varies between few cells whose degrees are 28 and relative humidity between 30 and 80% of relative humidity. So according to museum standards this environment is this climate is outside of any class of the climate control but the objects survived well in this environment. We also know that observation of active damage development are relatively rare or I would say they are rare even using very advanced methods of damage development tracing. And as Karen mentioned I had the national the laboratory, the National Museum in Cracow which is the largest and all this museum in Poland and we took care for the lady with our mind by Leonardo da Vinci and every few years we check the state of the preservation and the object had been for decades stored in the palace which had the class of the climate control according to Ashredi. I'm also showing the Monuments Man and the Liaison Officer Polish Liaison Officer Kalor Estreicher who brings the painting from Munich after the war not only to pay the tribute to Monuments Man but I wanted to show you in which condition this monument was transported it was not it was anything close to stable environment and we used the laser interferometry to trace damage development the laminations and also look at the cracks you can see here two macro photographs of the cracks in the painting one taken in 2002 another in 2012 and we binarize and digitize binarize the computer aid the game find a difference and there is nothing we can see some traces of the of dust and nothing nothing really else so damage development is observed really rarely we also recently understand much better the behavior of the materials my apologies for this scientific graph which shows in fact the mechanical properties of oil paints and here you have the strain upgrade which is parameter telling us about the brittleness so when the strain upgrade is lower the material is more brittle on the X axis we have stiffness so here is increasing stiffness and the numbers here they show tell us about the time or age of the sample expressing years of natural aging and all the samples which were measured in our groups the oldest in the world are 30 years old and we see clear trend paints, oil paints with time they become stiffer and much more brittle what is not shown here is also that those paintings they shrink and of course this causes that even in stable environment cracks in paintings and other materials or decorated objects they will develop independently on climate stability and you can see here in this famous painting of course the network dense network of cracklers and only some vertical cracks here are related to unstable environment there is also more statistical relevant research I'm showing here the research which were performed by the Wright's Museum they evaluated the state of the preservation of 370 experimented decorated oak panels which are considered one of the most vulnerable to environmental variation and they compare the state preservation with the old photographs the photographs which are in Wright's Museum archive which are more or less 100 years old and no damage development was noticed in these paintings and the most statistically relevant data were presented recently in the impact report of the government indemnity scheme in UK in which you can find the data between 2010 and 2022 and in total almost 30,000 objects were insured within the scheme and here you can see information about the percentage of claims and mainly they were handling losses, theft, vandalism fire and nothing no claims due to unstable environment so I think this gives us really a statistical proof not only anecdotal research about individual objects but statistical proofs that objects are not as vulnerable to humidity variation as we previously believed and all in all of course it leads us to conclusion that active climate control to prevent mechanical damage development is very cost ineffective so it has very low cost effectiveness. This is very important graph which shows that benefit could cost ratio obtained by the Canadian conservation institute which is expressed in number of saved dollars which certain preventive conservations were implemented or would be implemented and this is the cost of the implementation and on the X axis so here is a high cost effectiveness, here is low cost effectiveness. Here what you can see here there is a magnitude of risk so when we are to derive the risk they are larger and you can see here from this graph that from the business point of view dealing only with the large risk makes sense. This is just cost effective when we go down here we really have implemented ineffective actions and active climate control is located here so very expensive and very small benefit to the collection so when you are looking here more or less the cost effectiveness is that you have to invest 100,000 euros and you save 1 euro of the collection value this is very ineffective action so I am not a climate activist I believe that preserving the planet on the that planet there is definitely no art but I think that also from the business model point of view investing a lot and using a lot of energy very ineffective and these resources could be used much better for example to prevent those risks and in the last slide I would like also to indicate some gaps in knowledge. Stefano already mentioned about life cycle sustainability assessment which is really missing particularly in the area of preventive prevention of preservation of the collections but also we do know what are the relative costs of maintaining various types of climate so for example we do know how much energy we can save when we go from A to class climate B or C when we relax or we don't know also the small institution they don't know how much the energy bills will increase when they go from D to B so I will stop in this and thank you very much for your attention. Thank you Lukas. One question to you before we go on with the presentations quickly just a reflection from the room I can imagine there was a lot of conservatorists and collection keepers and head of collections here who might have been working for years if not even decades to improve their storages and improve the climate conditions in their communities and imagine now that they go back to their museum and general manager it's really inspired by your presentation and says that we don't need to invest anymore into climate control at all this is all unnecessary the things will, the artifacts will survive without all of these things that you have been telling me is there some hope you can give to these people to the collection keepers and the their work is actually important and the principles for what they have been working for are still valuable that the so I wouldn't sorry I wouldn't recommend to go to the directors or decision makers and say all these measures are unnecessary I would go and say the resources which you are using for that could be used for the other areas of the preservation so it's the change of the perspective and in all my consulting which I did both in the US and some European newsrooms but also in Poland I always advise to negotiate and the decision making process particularly when we are dealing with the millions of objects when we are dealing with high uncertainty is always very uncomfortable and people are making mistakes this is true for economy this is true for health for other aspects so making a mistakes is nothing bad we are always doing that just be a step mention on us and transparent and I have to say that when you look at the literature and reports about what because there are definitely some objects which are panerists which are vulnerable and we need to identify them but there is very little information published this is rather hidden by the institution when they fail and this is important also to share honestly the information about not all of our successes but failures thank you thank you very much I'm looking forward for all the discussion and the question that we will soon have but last not least we have Demo Kirjonen to join us Demo is basically back at home because he has been working here for years and he was actively working with the award-winning project the carbon neutral Lahti Symphony Orchestra from 2015 as the general manager of the orchestra at the Sibelius Hall here in Lahti and he knows this house like his five fingers and this literally back home for the conference today his new professional life has taken him to Turku where he leads the three museums of the Ober Academy University Foundation so we could say a new museum field but with a very impressive background in the cultural field and definitely a man of action with real practical background in creating change in the organization so his presentation navigating with the climate issues in different cultural fields explains about his experience working with the symphony orchestra and turning it into a carbon neutral orchestra as well as his new projects in the museum field so Demo the floor is yours Good planets are hard to find as Steve Forbert sang back in 1996 and that's maybe the guideline of my presentation and maybe somehow of this whole topic we are discussing in this conference I will be giving a very hands-on and a concise presentation about an orchestra project we did here at the Sibelius Hall and presentation also of a joint project of 13 museums in the Turku area and also how my or the three museums I represent are involved in that project and hopefully this is a kind of encouragement to think out of the box that is what we all need every now and then and yes that's me and just a kind of brief now I'm covering some of my background there but I will tell you what is there behind so these are the key sentences or words why I'm having a kind of double or even triple role in this presentation I was working for the Lahti Sinfonia orchestra as it was said in this building as a general manager for eight years but being in the administration for 19 years all together so I do know these corners we are in quite pretty well but then I changed the working field roughly a year ago so now I'm managing the three museums of the Aobo Academy University Foundation Foundation in Turku and and a little disclaimer I have discussed with the present general manager of the orchestra that it's okay that I will present something which is no kind of have a direct connection to me so that is done in a good cooperation something about this project we did with the orchestra so we launched it in 2015 and I must say that it's only eight years since 2015 but I must say that the world was very different in many ways when we launched it that okay Sinfonia orchestra in Finland start to kind of work with the climate issues it was seen very exotic even weird that kind of what is this all about and I mean we can see now it's a kind of part of the everyday discussion which is very very good so here briefly about the establishment of the project some key elements first of all we had a good collaboration with the association called storm warning and by this association we had Joni Keronen who is one of the leading climate experts in Finland giving a kind of same kind of presentation we heard in the beginning of this this day so really making us think that okay what is going to happen in the world in the next decades and the association had some projects with some artists but not with a symphony orchestra and then we started to discuss that why don't we do something with a symphony orchestra here in Lahti and kind of I want to stay here for a while because very important thing for me as a general manager was that this can't be something that is discussed somewhere in the management of an organization and then the organization is told that now we are green because so what we did first was a workshop with all the members of the orchestra like 75-80 people and in the end of that workshop I posed a question that there would be this kind of possibility to start to work with this kind of project are we in or not and it was 100% positive response we got so it was a good basis but very important for me and also another very important point for me was that part of this project was that Masters thesis was done on the carbon footprint of the orchestra so we had this kind of scientific document there not just that okay especially then that okay some symphony orchestra they think that okay they want to be green but what is that and do they know themselves so this was a kind of very important when we started to then work with that and when we have presented it very shortly I mean the simple three steps was given us so that first examine then reduce and then compensate and the branches there which were to be developed were transportation of the orchestra and the audience energy consumption and producing CDs and digital concerts and this waste management nothing very surprising but maybe the one important thing there is that as it said in the English abstract that particularly important is to get stakeholders to participate to reduction targets made by the symphony orchestra so I mean kind of a simple truth it doesn't make a very big change to one symphony orchestra in Finland to become a carbon neutral but there's a possibility to kind of be an inspiring example well I had this project launched and everybody was inspired and did a press release and huge excitement now we come out with a great news to the world and what happened we managed to get one one article symphony it says at the newspaper the symphony orchestra wishes to publish it and the good thing about this article was that it was very short and unnoticeable so it was easy to forget but this was that was in 2015 the case and I must say that we had a very good cooperation with the newspaper otherwise but apparently this was not their case at that time but very soon we started to get very interesting partnerships for example the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was our partner when we had this kind of green button campaign which meant that when you bought a concert ticket online there was a possibility to donate money to UN certified artists and so outside Lahti there was more understanding that there could be something interesting in our actions one important thing is that it's not the general manager who is there all the photos but using the musicians this is by city of Lahti in connection of a green capital project one of the orchestra's musicians there and there were many of them maybe one thing also here about the encouragement that when a symphony orchestra which is part of the city of Lahti that the city used this project and the orchestra quite innovative way for example here one little example we did a video or the city did this is the orchestra playing with the bicycle helmets on and when a new mayor was needed which turned out to be then Pekka Timon and we got a great person here with this advertisement this was with anything in Sanomat the biggest Finnish newspaper saying basically that modern professional classic task is needed and I like the dynamics and the idea of this this very well but when searching for a mayor use the local symphony orchestra that's the way to do it and internally in the orchestra this was a kind of recreational day we had planted some 6000 spruce trees there so again something that you can do which is beneficial and fun and something concrete you can do together in an organization and then the regional newspaper was already better on the same page also with us then just think that this this was quite I would say innovative back in 2015 so it got a lot of attention and publicity which is in a way very good and but I think the critical thing is that it's of course nice to get the attention and even some awards but I mean it's about to get all along and there is some process going on but here is some examples I had a possibility to present in this kind of zero emissions in Summit in New York part of the New York climate week then there was a BBC Radio 3 Music Matters program it was part of that also our project then we got this classical next innovation award in Rotterdam in 2018 and here actually when this award came and when I talked about involvement of the personnel of the orchestra some people came to me it's a bit embarrassing that we are getting these awards and everything that are we doing enough and I think that this is the kind of the best feedback as a manager let's see how it goes with this as a manager that okay actually the personnel is let's do more that was very excellent yes and this just before COVID we have this ABO conference which is an association of British orchestra so present it also there and as said many times also last Saturday here so Lahti was the European Green Capital 21 and it was very much used and international journalists coming one thing is that I thought there was important that it is we have to maintain the quality of our core work and this is an example that the Green Capital ordered the orchestra work from Finnish composer Cecilia Damström it was ICE so ICE or in case of emergency and it got this prestigious prize now I'm running quickly the project we have this is in the beginning or this has been now for two years this climate problems of museums in south-west Finland and this by Maja Taliya who is the project leader of this joint project of 13 museums are having do we have this forum marinum present there we have other museums from Turku no the core operators are the forum marinum and us apparently and very quickly this is a project that committed to execute one concrete action by the end of year 23 everyone has chosen their own path so that is maybe the key thing which suits each of us best the best and here we have the four topics environmental management system and certificate that is what we do in our museums we have the improvements of energy efficiency, waste management and use of renewable energy then it is biodiversity and cooperation with stakeholders and yes this is about cooperation the cooperation is the thing and it is a kind of pilot project in Finland and of course when the project ends in the end of this year we hope that we will see similar project here and there in Finland and maybe outside Finland as well and the closing seminar we are having in two weeks very briefly still giving examples this is the three museums I represent the Obu Akademi University Foundation which is an old foundation established to run a Swedish speaking university and Obu is Turku in Swedish as many of you know and we decided to do this eco compass this kind of certification we are aiming at and this is a company owned by the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation and so this kind of not for museums only but many festivals have taken this in Finland and many other businesses also and here briefly it has a certain set of things elements which must be included in order to get this certification so we have an auditioning for this eco compass now in the first of December so let's see whether we can make it on the first attempt here very very briefly some areas energy so goal reducing the consumption of electricity to use of heating energy purchasing again involving the staff all the staff must be involved very important travel and logistics what can we do with that nature is diversity we have this kind of garden like areas in some of our museums and material use relating to exhibitions and so on and communications that we also remember to communicate communicate what we do one little I thought that my time was over but I saw that one minute is there so I say one that that this kind of cleaning that also the digital files that we would have the kind of annual day for that and of course that is something that maybe one not remembers all the time but it is also the digital material which is kind of causing causing some ecological issues thank you so much thank you Teima so much one question before we start with the panel can you already see that there is something you can use from working with the orchestra to now working with the museums or is there something the museums can learn from orchestras do you see there is something that is valuable for you from a previous experience I would say that in general it is just this being out of the box first of all you have to kind of get out of the box yourself and then do something that it maybe hasn't been done before and kind of try to package it that way that it can be kind of inspirational for the surroundings I would say that maybe if there are some elements in more detail of course happy to hear was there some reflection that this might be for some other organisation as well thank you please Stefan as well we can take our seats here and I hope Luca she is still with us online wonderful good to see you so for the discussion I would actually start on a very personal level you are all strongly advocating for something what was your awakening call or do you recall the moment something changed in you that led to these topics being so relevant into your professional and personal life maybe Lukas you can start on screen do you remember your awakening moment I think it was when I became a head of the laboratory at the National Museum in Krakow and there were so many issues related to preventive conservation and really I didn't know where to invest the limited resources not only financial but the human resources and then we look also at the cost and it occurred that at the National Museum in Krakow there were 65 conservators working and the cost energy cost were comparable to cost of the celebrities so when I saw this very large imbalance how much we spent for that and in fact there was very let's say one person responsible for the risk of fire so then understood that active climate control and preventing the damage development is absolutely not optimal from the point of view of using limited museum's resources invested in the preservation so and the second maybe I will mention it was lecture of Paul Slovic who works on the humanitarian humanitarian help and he show how many cognitive biases do we have when we make a decision which are related with the high uncertainties and I understood we are not alone the other fields other disciplines they have very similar problems and they people that's people nature to make a wrong decision so it was it. Thank you Stefan do you like to go on? Yeah well it's similar right I share with Wukasz a long way in my career we work together at Yale University for several years and it's similar of course we are all standing on the shoulders of somebody before us people like Mary and Micklinburg Jonathan Ashley Smith you know many people who shape this field and I should admit that as a scientist I was believing for the majority of my career that lost losing heritage is a strength of the wind the earthquake you know putting everything into numbers this is what I was doing for so many years well and then I was almost 60 years old and I realized that disaster is actually a social construct we are losing things not because of the physical parameters we are losing it because of the social ones and so I have to admit I became kind of an activist a little bit isolated in the museum community but I can share with you one panel discussion just not long ago with activists from Tuvalu in Berlin it's a little island in the Pacific Ocean which is going to drown in the next 30 40 years it was a young woman Grace Mali she was sitting with me on that panel and I was actually wondering why I am on this panel I was never in the Pacific Island I have no idea about what's happening there but they brought me because they thought you know this is the guy from the museums criticizing new museums and activists so let's bring him here and listening to this activists and to the actually also courage and the optimism of this young activists because they are really optimistic still if they would be thinking like me they wouldn't be active and sitting down in the streets so this was kind of the moment I decided okay I have a few more years left I'm not going to do anything else than working for climate friendly museums and green museums it's beautiful and how about you Demo? Yes, I kind of referred to that but I can say it kind of a little other perspective that it was this National Orchestra Conference which was held in Lahti back in 2015 and it was the very last presentation it was actually at the Sokos Hotel Seurohuane what many of us know I guess that Sunday morning and this Joni Keronen's presentation there and not many orchestras left there actually and the ones who were there were maybe a bit sleepy but anyway it was such a strong message he gave that it made me think that okay there is something and maybe the thing I want to mention that it was in a way an easy task for me because I happened to have an organization which had developed itself as a kind of quite open for all kinds of projects I don't take credit of that it has been kind of been like that long before my time but it was easy to kind of grab that okay now there is this climate changed so okay we have a symphony orchestra so why don't we start to discuss but you need this kind of awakening up apparently that okay and no other orchestra kind of took this chance and then we had our chance and it became a very rewarding journey I would say in addition to a personal awakening call it's really important how the society or the country supports it and I guess Poland, Finland, Germany can share quite different circumstances or environments in this sense so how would you say how much for example when Finland has changed within these eight years of your projects at the moment you started what was the perception in the society and where you are right now well as said it was seen very very exotic and of course over the years and now the very recent years I would say that it has come to the discussion very dramatically and also various cultural institutions have been active and I think what comes to the kind of cultural fields in Finland so I would dare to claim that festivals have been maybe the most active maybe they are kind of as organizational structures are quite dynamic otherwise so but festivals have been very active for many years but now kind of this or different kind of institutions coming along so that is crucial because this has to be done together. How about Poland Lukasz how open is Poland for talking about climate change and specifically in the museum field I'm sorry we can't hear you Lukasz you are muted yes that's better I'm sorry I was muted yes so it's progressing I have to say that recently 10 major national museums they agreed on relaxation of the environment and current recommendation are 35-60% of relative humidity this is absolutely a good sign but generally I still as Stefan mentioned I hope in and believe in young generation without they entering to the museums without pushing their agenda and be more sensitive because I believe that works of art heritage is not more important than human life or the biodiversity they are conflicting needs and this discussion I unfortunately is not very active in Poland that's my opinion Stefan how about Germany we always look to Poland we know that you build a storage facility which has like 5 or 10 kWh per square meter in year where we are building similar facilities with like 50 times more energy consumption in Germany so how can my perspective be I think I want to give some tribute to the Scandinavian countries because Denmark for example has been really at the forefront of this development Sweden with the University of Gotland has been at the forefront of this development we only look you know we look in Germany and if I read open the newspaper we have been emitting more carbon gases in 21 5% almost 4.5% more than in 2020 in Germany according to the UBA the Federal Agency for the Environment I think this is going in the totally wrong direction every museum we built used more energy than the old one the one I was just mentioning costs of building costs of 31,000 euro per square meter is unprecedented so it's getting like worse and it's not optimistic but I'm looking at the Scandinavian countries and I'm wondering why are they why are they able to build this storage in Wale for the National Museum why are my colleagues and friends in Poland building this storage why can't we and I hope we can learn a little bit from our neighboring countries and then get more optimistic for my country too because Stefan really mentioned and I feel bad about my country because we are building two almost passive storages for the National Archive this is building, operating and the Central Storage for Museums in the Central Poland but I would say that this is because individuals they believe that it makes sense what I was referring to general discussion and sensitivity of that so we have successes but this is because there were people really engaging in this action and pursuing with the projects Thank you When we go more into the change we are talking a lot about change and to make a change like Deimo described it's a specific process already in one organization not to mention if you want to make a change in the society so what kind of change might there be when such change starts from cultural institution because we all represent cultural institution so what specifically the importance that we as cultural institution representatives can have in driving this change Who would be ready? Well I would say that one kind of very natural thing for us is that we reach large number of audiences different kind of audiences so we are kind of ready to communicate things with large amount of people and so we have many of us for example art in different formats and art is of course something that has been kind of communicating with the surrounding societies throughout the decades and centuries so I mean I think that we have a kind of good kit of instruments in our use if we use them cleverly that kind of just kind of modifying the message that it's not something that we are kind of closed institutions who suddenly need to kind of start to communicate this kind of a broader audience but on the contrary that it is very natural for us so kind of that we remember that we can be quite influential in this perspective that kind of encouraging the societies around us I would agree with Temo when he speaks about the tool kit which we have I think museums although we had this debate here we tend to believe that we are high trust institutions but I always want to remind you that we are high trust institutions for ourselves not necessarily for some others and we are not neutral in any way but we can be safe places for unsafe discussions we can be exactly there I just can't and that's why I would always call museums to be more courageous and actually as I said before invite climate activists to the museum talk with them let them not only glue themselves to your painting frames right that's what we but also I don't really like I have to admit but talk to how they see a museum and the role of the museum and the role of the society in the future because I think Temo you are very right the cultural institutions have this tool kit and can engage beyond the traditional boundaries and we should do that much boldly and much more courageously than we actually do and not be afraid because we might be surprised who is coming to our museums and who actually engages with this dialogue then if I can still comment very briefly that for example in Lahti things started to happen around us for example it was the local hockey team the pelicans in the national league who after a while our project was presented so they launched a similar project that they want to be the first carbon neutral hockey team in the world not only the kind of like-minded around us in a way that don't get me wrong in that but we can be like-minded with the hockey players also but I mean you can find surprising openings when you start to do something Lukas would you like to add something so what Temo described and Stefan I think they draw attention to the bottom up approach this is very important so if society wants that's easy but it's not always the case I still believe that there are some room for policymaking and top-down approach because if you want to define or institution wants to define what they want it's not always necessary that everyone is so sensitive to issues and having a slight pressure or many projects which are take part in and defining what we want it's because of the policy so there is also this important aspect and I believe in this important tool it's very good I'm sorry that you mentioned policymaking I think a lot of people and a lot of museums feel that's very overwhelming that it's really difficult to somehow make an impact and change there so how could we help each other we are still here in Nemo conference that's the organization for all the museum associations around Europe how is that we could do something to make this impact also on the policy level or what are the roadblocks we should be aware of while trying to make this change I can start I mean the first thing is the connection the network I mean to collaborate to exchange to be as I said more transparent and open about your climate data for example I think if you have a big impediment for a real ecological transformation of museums are actually loan agreements are actually legal procedures so but as Wukas is showing and my research tool and many other colleagues we're operating in a kind of Kafkaesque theater situation here that if museums would be collaborating more openly and would say okay we share our data we want to have this data accessible to everybody that would be a huge step forward because then for example and I'm dreaming now for example in the loan agreement one could change from the policy side that you can only request climatic condition from the institution which gets your painting if you can assure the same conditions at home it sounds logical but it's not the case you can say you want to have 50% plus minus 5 and at home you're not even ashric last sea that's possible so I think that would be a good policy another good policy would be if ministries federal ministries for example in Germany would say well I want you to do a benchmarking for your energy for your climate not for the CO2 by the way you will have noticed that neither Lukas nor me were speaking about carbon balances because conversion factors are changing every year it opens the floodgates of greenwashing but if you compare energy consumption how much energy do you really need for your museum and then compare it to another one I think that could help a lot so I think collaboration and networks in the museum community would be really really a strong asset and we do it I mean we see it with the museum spun with Nemo with others I think it's which get definitely better than they have been 10 years ago so if I can join the discussion Stefan and I'm a little bit less optimistic than you for example sharing the information would help because I know that or what you mentioned about the loans some I know some institutions which demand very airtight or sorry stringent parameters for the loans agreement just to limit the loans and it's used as a tool to create shape the loan policy and I believe like in New York for example I remember 10 years ago I had a discussion about energy use of Metropolitan Museum and they were not interested so much now the city introduced the demands the reduction of the energy consumption so I don't think that it comes unfortunately from our sector it comes from general discussion and this I think is a driving factor well not much to add I think these kind of events and networking and sharing the ideas is the thing and I don't know how much we kind of compete with each other otherwise but I think this is definitely not that kind of battle there is a battle but it is a joint battle against something totally something different yeah well let's share ideas then we have a bit time for questions for the audience as well because time is really going fast with these discussions and really relevant topics so if there's anybody who would like to use the chance and ask a question from somebody from the panel now it's the opportunity just raise your hand and you will be handed over a microphone okay from them yeah brilliant presentations really interesting unlocking a lot of ideas and thinking but just a really simple question is the care of collections and objects paramount because I don't know I'm sure you're aware the BISO group of museum directors has just republished refreshed its guidance and there's lots of good stuff in that but it says the care of collections objects is paramount and I was surprised by that so I'm interested in your responses Lukas would you like to begin with? I absolutely sure I don't know but I'm hearing you I think that when we have we live in times when there are different conflicting needs we need to balance between them unfortunately I think we cannot preserve everything we need to make because just the preservation is not for free so I wouldn't say that it's paramount I think there are also other important issues and open discussions or societal needs and open discussions is very needed about that yeah I mean thank you Lukas I think similarly Leonardo da Vinci said with water and time everything changes and when I get up in the morning and I look into the mirror I think he was right every morning so I think we have to allocate resources right and it's risk management so something we can save but we will not save everything and actually I think everybody knows that we're going to lose a lot of our heritage and the idea to save something for the eternity is not going to work on this planet for nothing I mean really nothing also not for objects in museums so but I'm saying this as somebody who works 40 years and if I have to describe my work in a nutshell it's like just making art and cultural heritage survive sustainably for future generations that's my job but it's not possible for everything and if I can add I think that this ethical stance is of course giving some mandate to speak about that but I think that the pandemic and the pandemic they showed us that we have to choose we have limited resources and the question is how to use this limited resources for the best benefit of the society and there is no escape that unfortunately some people will die and sorry for saying that thank you Lukas we have a question well firstly I want to thank you for making me feel a lot less bad about the state of our collection units because we have absolutely zero atmospheric control in them the best is that the house is heated and that's not even true for most of them then again we are a mining museum so most of our items are pretty rugged but and I'm not very familiar with the ashrah but when you said no climate controls I suppose you still meant that they would be in a heated location like in a building with four walls and a roof and some sort of heating inside that you don't let the temperature fluctuate plus 40 to minus 30 and stuff like this thank you I think this was more like a reflection of these topics that you have here it's very nice to hear that anybody else for questions there's one at the back I was wondering when I listen to you it's like doing less damage to like lose less energy and so forth but what are your thoughts about doing something completely different like instead of just fixing a system that doesn't really work then trying to create a new system so how do you see the future of your professional life in that view could you explain what you mean by doing something totally different I would be very curious because it might be interesting the system that we had broke the planet we're all focusing on doing less of all the bad stuff but it's still within the same system so at the same time as doing less damage you also have to invent a completely new way of doing things so it's sort of going back to the more radical idea of changing our sector now I understand at the first moment I thought you were expecting us to think about better HVAC systems so thank you very much just from my personal point of view I come from Bavaria from the mountainside I have a forest I will probably work in my forest a little bit the next years and learning from the forest is that symbiosis and collaboration is much more successful than competition you just have to walk through the forest and you learn this this is kind of a battle going on but it's going very slowly and it's not about competition and for me I think this is kind of the lesson right that this as I also said in my short statement that the things which we did for the last 50 years and actually let me remind you that climatization in museums we have in Europe only since the late 60s we have the Mies van der Rohe in 1969 was one of the first climatized buildings in Germany next to the Vorkwang Museum in Essen and the Germanisches National Museum in Nürnberg it's these 50 years of my life where we shifted the Earth Overshoot Day from December 29 in 1971 to May 3rd in this year so I totally agree we have to do something entirely different and not like the politicians in my country said I was in a meeting in the ministry a few weeks ago I said we need a 360 degree turn you know I'm still scientist enough to know that if we do that we're exactly where we are before right what we need is a 180 degree turn so thank you very much thank you we have time for one or two more questions from the audience here in the middle there's one is there somebody with a microphone available hi thank you nice to see you here I have a question not about the climate activists this time Stefan so don't worry and thank you for mentioning the storage that we're building so I know I think very well how much criticism it had to take and it's still taking it I wanted to ask because I found your presentations very convincing in terms of climate control and stuff and I know a little bit about it however how does this relate to the rule that we've been told to obey for many many years which is the rule of sustainability where we are supposed to protect our heritage in order to pass it on to further next generations an unchanged condition you said that perhaps we don't have to protect it for eternity where is the fin line sustainability doesn't seem to go in line with this well yeah thank you Paulina I would say there's already an intrinsic problem with the museum core mandate to collect things and to build a collection larger and larger and larger a little bit of problem with the sustainability principle that's the first thing and the second thing is I think once we manage I mean we have to but preservation is actually managing sustainable preservation managing the change because we have a change we have a change all the time we have a change in the intangible part we have a change in the intangible part it would be naive to say well we preserve for eternity because it's not going to work we have as Wukasz and Wukasz you may correct me we have to make a choice when we look at September 2018 Rio de Janeiro and 18 million objects burning in one night that's a lot of change and probably I would say that's way too much of a change for one night so if I can decide where do I put my resources I would rather put it to a good fire protection then into the ATREX system especially since I learned from Wukasz today that you gain one euro if you invest 100,000 so that's not really a great investment advice Wukasz thank you so you can develop your collection you can decide to invest into research which improve the knowledge about the collection there is so many actions what we are just saying that climate control is unsustainable in terms both of the energy and it's not just efficient but I agree with Stefan unfortunately because we have limited resources we cannot hope for unchanging even in the decades with the objects so no changing to the objects into decades that's just not gonna to happen as with our life we are just dying sorry to finish this panel with a slightly more positive note hopefully for a very very quick last comment from everybody what's the one thing you take away from today as something hopeful that you are going to do or change or something when somebody is struggling what's there that I can do what's your message to them tomorrow when you go home do this and you will have an impact what would you recommend Teemu? Well I would say that of course we are facing huge problems and challenges but of course one has to try to do his or her best that the future will be anyway better than it is now and I mean shortly referring for example to this green capital here here in Lahti so I mean what kind of you have to leave something behind but actually there were for example this clean tech companies and new businesses were arising but you need to close one door in order to open new ones Thank you. Lukas your final I think it was mentioned several times I think I hope for honest discussion and this is very important some of our beliefs they will not hold for in future they will be new one and just discussion there is no other way to progress Thank you and Stefan. Yeah the same I mean the discussion is important we may disagree on a lot of things but we might still find a lot of things which overlap especially in the climate crisis debate emotions are maybe more important than facts you know that's difficult to say for a scientist but it's probably the truth of my experience that you can connect with people through emotions so I would say if I would be a hockey supporter if I would know something I would support the Lahti hockey team that's a really very convincing way to address climate change and climate crisis here in Finland so I would take this with me I'm a supporter of your hockey team here Thank you. Thank you so much for everybody here in the panel thank you for the questions and everybody who is here if I can have your attention for 20 more seconds we have a challenge in our museum in Tallinn and Wabamel right now which is the darkest and most depressing time of the year the autumn here in the northern hemisphere that we need to use those reusable film cameras and take pictures of moments when we feel content and happy and joy and I would really like to take a picture of this audience here if you don't mind just a second, okay, ready? this will be archived and preserved for all the future generations one, two, three good, thank you, have a nice day