The cultural sector is talking about climate change but not acting fast enough
I am the Director of Stourbridge Glass Museum, and as I write this, 3 miles away from the museum, firefighters are putting out one of the largest wildfires in modern British history on our doorstep.
We are a museum that came within weeks of bankruptcy during the gas crisis and survived only because we transformed ourselves into one of Europe’s first near net zero museums.
That experience changed how we operate, how we think, and how we understand our responsibility to the public.
It also revealed something deeply troubling. The cultural sector is not treating climate change with the urgency it demands, and neither are the funders who shape our national priorities.
Major funders talk positively about climate change but it is still not their top priority.
Across the sector, funders and national bodies increasingly acknowledge climate change. Art Fund, Historic England, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and DCMS all speak positively about sustainability, resilience and environmental responsibility.
But talking about climate change is not the same as putting it at the very top of funding priorities.
Right now, climate action is still treated as one priority among many, optional rather than essential, and secondary to traditional cultural themes.
Given the scale of the crisis, this is no longer tenable. Funders must move beyond positive language and make climate action, especially climate education, the primary criterion for cultural investment.
A sector declaring climate emergencies without delivering climate action
Every council in the West Midlands declared a climate emergency years ago. Yet the funding landscape has barely shifted. Climate change education is still treated as a secondary theme. Net zero transitions are still seen as optional.
This gap between rhetoric and reality is now impossible to ignore.
The National Glass Centre is closing and energy costs are a central reason
At the same time, the National Glass Centre in Sunderland is closing, with one of the principal reasons cited being the physical management of the building and the cost of energy, driven by an all gas operation that has become financially unsustainable.
This should be a wake up call for the entire sector.
If a flagship national institution cannot survive under old energy models, how can smaller museums be expected to?
Meanwhile, Stourbridge Glass Museum has taken the opposite path. We now operate Europe’s first all electric glass studio powered by solar, proving that net zero innovation is not only possible but essential for survival.
Communities are telling us something uncomfortable: climate literacy is failing
Our conversations with visitors across the West Midlands reveal a stark truth. Many people still do not accept human made climate change as fact.
This is not a fringe minority. It is widespread, persistent and fuelled by misinformation.
Museums are one of the few trusted civic spaces left. If we do not step up to deliver climate education, who will?
The crisis is no longer hypothetical. It is happening outside our doors.
We used to create exhibitions about the environment that asked visitors to imagine future risks. Now, while planning our Other Glass: Recycled Art exhibition, wildfires were tearing across Stourbridge and the West Midlands, destroying homes and forcing evacuations.
The contrast was surreal.
While we were exhibition planning on one side of town, people were being evacuated to the Town Hall on the other during the largest wildfires in our countries recorded history, with the British Red Cross present supporting displaced residents.
A museum preparing an exhibition about recycled glass and environmental change while climate driven fires forced families from their homes just streets away.
Heatwaves are reshaping Britain’s landscapes. A drive to Wales, once the symbol of the green and pleasant land, now reveals hillsides turned yellow, dry and arid.
And still, in these very communities, climate denial persists.
As Dudley Council Leader Patrick Harley said on BBC News this morning, we must rethink how we deal with the changing climate. Museums must be part of that response.
Our own survival depended on climate action
Stourbridge Glass Museum nearly collapsed during the gas crisis. Our energy bills became unmanageable. Our future looked bleak.
We survived because we acted.
We installed a solar array and battery system that now generates and stores significant amounts of energy. We sell back to the grid. We have reduced our carbon footprint dramatically. We have proven that net zero museums are possible and financially essential.
But this transition required capital investment that most museums cannot access under current funding models.
Funders must now treat climate change as the sector’s top priority
If funders are serious about climate action, they must:
- Make climate education the highest priority across all grant programmes
- Support net zero building transitions as core cultural infrastructure
- Fund long term climate programmes rather than short term projects
- Embed climate literacy in all grant criteria
- Equip museums with dedicated environmental staff so they have the capacity to deliver climate education and sustainability projects.
- DCMS should offer free and high quality energy efficiency audits.
This is not about politics. It is about responsibility, survival and the role museums play in shaping public understanding.
We have just a few years left before 2030.
Climate scientists are clear. The window for preventing the worst impacts of global warming is closing. We cannot wait for another funding cycle, another strategy review, another round of consultations.
Museums must lead. Funders must enable. Communities must be equipped with the knowledge they need to understand what is happening around them.
Climate change is not one priority among many. It is the defining challenge of our century.
The cultural sector has always been a guardian of memory. Now it must become a guardian of the future.
