A midway point round-up of our environmental progress

Like us, you’ll probably find it hard to believe that we’re already over halfway through the year. It seems like just yesterday that we were wrapped in blankets, finishing the last of the festive food and longing for warmer days. For Grace and Harry, it was when they were embarking on Artswork’s Environmental Project, with a brief from Contracts and Policy Manager Donna and an idea to continue building on our goal to be more ecological. Since then a lot has changed, including Harry sadly leaving us to explore a new opportunity. So we thought it would be fitting to mark this point in the year through a review from Grace of what we’ve done so far – and of course, how we’re planning to build upon it!  

Harry and I began our project with a review of our existing material – which consisted of an organisational environmental policy and a series of social media profiles on young environmentalists as commissioned by Donna and written by Grace. We knew we needed to do so much more however to really make an impact, and by aligning our environmental goals with those of the Arts Council, our funders, we had a starting point. While Harry began building the project home page, I set about discovering what Artswork staff, our friends and family and professional connections already knew. The easiest way to action this in the least time-consuming manner was through surveys, and our eyes were opened by the information discovered – including mine while researching it! We also spent some time reviewing the actions we’d already been able to make as an organisation, and analysing the data to see how effective they’d been. From the start we’ve pledged to be open about what we’re doing and when things aren’t working, as well as when they are.  

For us, it was important to live the change that we wanted to see, while acknowledging that we had a lot to learn, and being realistic enough not to overcommit to things we didn’t have full knowledge around yet. A useful way to do this was by marrying old and new content, such as finding lots of amazing more young people to write about. I was awestruck by just how many incredible young people are trying to make this world a better place – the more I researched; the more I found.

Naturally I was never going to be able to cover them all, but it was important that I represented a diverse range of ages, backgrounds, nationalities, genders and lived experiences through my writing. For instance, I featured several young people of Indigenous descent, both because they are constantly under-represented, but also because they have the most extraordinary stories that we all need to learn about.  

If you follow us on social media, you’ll have likely seen our regular progression updates, and we’ve loved sharing the quirky and helpful tips and facts we’ve discovered along the way. It’s now more important than ever to have waste and energy saving strategies in mind, with the cost-of-living crisis affecting all of us – reducing our carbon footprint reduces your expenditure too. One of the most important ways we like to use our platform (alongside our main purpose of making cultural enrichment accessible to all children and young people) is to help wherever we can, with whatever we can. Part of this is harnessing the elements and tangible things we all have at our disposal, and using them responsibly to bring us joy and inspiration. We recently found a way to do this while marking International Day of Forests, and inviting our staff to share stories and pictures of their favourite green spaces. We also changed the profile pictures of our Communications’ team and Donna to those of trees, in solidarity with the anti-deforestation movement, and to pause and reflect.  

Something I have enjoyed doing since I began my Artswork journey as a Kickstarter is writing content to celebrate National and World/Global days that we can all be included in and contribute to. Due to the type of organisation we are and the number of issues we’re passionate about, our scope for subject matter is wide, and we champion any cause that is relevant and important. Since this project began, I’ve been fortunate enough to write about many days of importance, such as Global Recycling Day, World Environment Day and World Refill Day, as well as weeks including National Bike Week and National Growing for Wellbeing Week. (If you want to look back on these occasions we’ve celebrated), our social media channels have all the content!)  

So now, we’re looking to the next 6 months about how we can use all we’ve learnt and done thus far to continue our positive impact, and to use our platform as effectively as possible. A big step forward in becoming better equipped to handle the climate crisis is calculating our own output from all sources such as lighting, heating, power needed to run equipment (and the carbon emitted by said equipment), emissions produced from travelling to work and meetings etc. Examining and unpacking this data has taken us a while, but we now have a wealth of information which we’re now using to enact changes, in addition to the reductions in unnecessary carbon output we’ve made over the last few years. A common reason people and companies don’t tackle their digital impact is because they don’t know where to start with doing the maths, and translating that into visualised change. But it is so worth taking the time to do those calculations, and this Bulb tool for working from home emissions was extremely useful to us. 

So now to look to the remainder of the year and what we’re planning. We’ve recently welcomed Kickstarter Kiera into the environmental content sphere, and she’s been producing some fab eye-catching posters for the office which are also heading onto our socials channels imminently! She’s planning content to mark global and national days for the latter part of the year, and is currently writing her first profile on a young environmentalist. Meanwhile, I’m planning social content for the next couple of months, and looking to produce more website pieces for the remainder of my time with Artswork. As neither of us are permanent staff, we are only able to plan so far in advance, but we are excited to do as much as we can in the time we’re privileged to work on this amazing project.

It’s easy and common to feel (even when you’re part of a company) like you’re a small fish in a big world, and can our actions really make a difference? Well, if everyone thought like that, we wouldn’t get anywhere. Collective mentality is a powerful thing, but so is individual mentality. Because believe it or not, spreading the word actually works, largely because humans love to follow and hop on trends (and that extends to climate activism.) So we’d love you to join us in this, something that we hope isn’t going to just be a trend, but a powerful movement with longevity and optimism. If you aren’t already, follow us Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to keep up to date and let us know how we’re doing!  

Tags:

Environmental blogs Environmental Issues young people Young people's blogs Youth Blog