Wellbeing and social justice in museums

Here’s a thought provoking article by Maurice Davies of the Museums Association, asking Social Justice vs Wellbeing? Are they just different means to the same end?

I find it interesting as it’s the first time I’ve seen such a definite claim that museums have two distinct approaches in their social change work, ‘social justice’ and ‘wellbeing’ approaches.

He says “there are some philosophical differences.
Social justice focuses on areas such as human rights, inequality and poverty. It believes the state should strongly intervene in communities. With origins on the left, it is perhaps red.
Wellbeing prioritises concepts such as self-help, local organisation and relationships. It stresses the role of civil society organisations, such as charities and community groups, to complement the work of the state, whose main role is to help local communities flourish so they can find their own solutions. It has its recent origins, at least in part, in the green movement.”

He talks about rumblings of disagreement between the two camps “with social justice people thinking wellbeing people are a bit wet and naïve about the realities of disadvantaged people’s lives. Conversely, wellbeing people think social justice people are a bit too top down and doctrinaire.”

However, he doesn’t see a great deal of difference between them, seeing the approaches as more on a spectrum, and fundamentally sharing the same goals.

I agree that these two approaches do share the same goals, basically the elimination of inequality and suffering. Kate Raworth’s Oxfam Doughnut model shows that all issues, whether environmental or social, are aspects of the same goal we are all driving towards, providing a safe and just space for humanity. A safe biosphere and justice between people. What makes it different from prior models, such as the Millennium Development Goals, is that it acknowledges the planetary boundaries being breached by human action. Humanity needs to thrive so that it can steward and repair the planet, for the sake of both humanity and other species. If inequality continues, conflict and despair will make it harder for us to tackle these massive problems of our environmental infrastructure.

However, I think that there is more to say about the philosophical differences that underlie these rumblings in museums. If these disagreements are more clearly understood they can be flipped towards productivity (and museums really need to work harmoniously together right now). I wonder if the disagreements arise more from deeply held passions and/or denial about the immensity of the environmental crisis than they do from differing views on semantics or organisational tactics.

Social Justice is actually one of the four pillars of the Green Party worldwide so it’s interesting that a green/wellbeing approach is held as being opposed to social justice. The Wellbeing movement is in part a response to criticisms of environmentalists that they focus too much on the planet, that green measures will deny people the chance to escape poverty. (For an example of this, see how this socialist article likens the wellbeing and resilience agenda to neoliberalism.) Wellbeing advocates explore the many ways that an environmentally sustainable lifestyle is healthier for mind, body and society. If people can become less obsessed with consumption and wealth, they will suffer less from exposure to relative inequality. In turn, fewer people will pursue excessive wealth which causes inequality. The economy can be sustained, even grow, if we don’t place further stress on the fragile planet but start to heal it.

Maurice reports disagreements between the statist (social justice) and localist (wellbeing) agendas, but I’m not sure this reaches the heart of the difference. In the political world the statist and localist camps are fairly closely entwined. The thinking behind Wellbeing groups such as Transition Towns comes out of the co-operative and unionist movements, very ground-up and local, that led to the foundation of the welfare state. On the other hand, the Conservatives formed the Big Society policy and are pursuing localism (although arguably as a smokescreen for privatisation). The three major parties all pursue pro-growth free market capitalism in which a controlling state gives free rein only to profiteers. The three parties will differ in the extent to which they promote this, admit to it, or repress it, depending on their election strategies or how much money they have to spend on welfare schemes.

I think the disagreements are more likely to hinge on whether museum people developed their social justice practice in loyalty to their local communities and to Labour policies (after years of Thatcherism, and in current austerity), or whether they are more motivated by bigger geophysical and global threats. This loyalty is quite understandable and generates extremely worthwhile practice. The latter is somewhat taboo, in the museums sector and elsewhere, and is therefore under-explored. This taboo relates to a general public failure to acknowledge that ecology is economy, that land is food is wellbeing and that broken systems of ecology break humanity. (For example, it’s not widely acknowledged, but proven, that the root causes of uprising around the Mediterranean and Arab world are climate change and mismanagement of environmental resources.)

The stimulus for Maurice’s post was the Happy Museum project. This explores the role of museums in transitioning communities to a ‘high wellbeing, low carbon’ society. The ‘low carbon’ sustainability dimension was an integral part of its conception. However, the project evaluation showed that museums really struggle with public programming for environmental change. Most funding applications to both rounds were about health, intergenerational learning or reminiscence, not about ecologically sustainable communities. Tony Butler reported that “Well-being in isolation is an ‘easier sell’ than the trickier implications of setting well-being in the context of less conspicuous consumption, low growth, or environmental stewardship.”

The vision for the Happy Museum project has been changed to Museums that foster wellbeing that doesn’t cost the earth. It suggests a shift from a potential model in which ecological sustainability is prioritised as the means to achieve widespread wellbeing. Maurice Davies doesn’t see much difference between social justice and wellbeing approaches, seeing them both as means to an end. Maybe that’s because, in the museums sector, there isn’t really any difference: there are just variants on generous and people-centred practice. Social change projects by museums have had great impacts on individuals and localities but they haven’t cured inequality and ecocide, mainly because museums are not powerful enough alone. Also, they can’t easily tackle the corporatised culture that supports landgrabbing, ecocide, food speculation and banker’s bonuses when they are so entwined in that culture.

Beyond museums, there is a gulf between those who can see no way beyond capitalistic social democracy and those who call for complete systemic overhaul to avert imminent biosphere collapse. We may not be aware of the gulf because the calls for systemic overhaul are not given a place in mainstream media. Raworth’s Doughnut model does reflect perceptions that environmental and social issues sit either side of the ‘safe and just space’, perpetuating a Red/Just and Green/Safe split. Her work is so important because it aims to draw them together, to stop fighting over what is a ‘chicken & egg’ situation. You can’t have biosphere safety without justice and you can’t have justice without safety. (Personally, I think, in museums and beyond, there has been too much ‘chicken’ – too much denial about losses in environmental security, and not enough ‘egg’ – seeding ecological innovation.) It would be good to see more museums and cultural practitioners coming together in campaigns and practical actions for a safe and just world.

PS Here is a toolkit I produced with Renaissance South East and eight museums, aiming towards such a goal, called Museums for the Future.

The Happy Museum from a distance

By Paul Clarke

Personal circumstances conspired to stop me attending the Happy Museum symposium. One thing keeping me at home was a visit from the Home Education Inspector, which was unmissable really. (We passed the inspection.) But, too interested, I couldn’t keep away from the Twitter stream and the photos coming from Paul Clarke, who I was delighted to see had been employed to document the symposium.

Tony Butler has just written a great post reflecting on the event, and listed some fascinating questions that he wants to pursue. Although each one is worth a thesis and I’m foolishly starting this at midnight, I’m paraphrasing each one and responding with some half-formed thoughts.

1) Why are museums good at ‘high well-being’ but less good at addressing good stewardship of our environment? Some tentative thoughts:

Maybe, because good environmental stewardship is not integrated into our ways of thinking or talking, not just in museums but in the wider culture? We don’t have an ecological epistemology. You might see campaigns about litter or tree-planting or counting birds. But these campaigns don’t reinforce how human wellbeing depends on the wellbeing of ecosystems and biodiversity. Museums endorse and reflect a traditional taxonomy, whereby Natural History and Earth Science are always in different museums or departments from Art, Design, Anthropology etc. Even the question which holds ‘high wellbeing’ and ‘environmental stewardship’ as distinct activities or concerns, reflects this separation (which isn’t to criticise the question or questioner).

2) Why has the dominant radical social justice paradigm in museums been so poor in linking social justice with resource equity and climate change? Some very tentative thoughts indeed:

Funding sources setting the agenda have required museums to focus closely on social agendas. 13+ years of Blairism: Museums & schools have been expected to overcome social inequality, while the Government’s policies on taxation and the liberalisation of capital worsened inequality. The more we saw inequality worsen the harder some of us in the sector tried to tackle it.

Wider society, including the elites of politicians and media commentators, are almost entirely blind to the connections between social injustice and the resource iniquities resulting from agribusiness, food shortages due to climate change, conflict fuelled by fighting over resources and so on. They are, however, starting to wake up to the connections between resource inequity and corporate greed.

Because reports like this (review of 2011 from an environmental perspective) don’t get extrapolated and mapped onto other projections or interpretations of what is happening in the world.

3) Why is it we have to revisit examining the relationship between culture and wellbeing when we have years of experience and analysis? Some rather simplistic thoughts:

From a positive perspective, because we do now need a radical fresh understanding of culture and wellbeing. Cultural research hitherto has been carried out in a vacuum, in which an understanding of wellbeing has a limited frame of reference, one which is not informed by an ecological epistemology. Conventional discourses skew the public debate because culture is generally represented as a decoration above brutish life, a form of escape rather than a return. When culture is not recognised as the fundamental means by which we spread and grow knowledge and thereby develop the means to thrive (not just between our own species but with others) we can only measure its value in ways that devalue it.

To be more critical, it is because we now have a Government which is blundering through a radical reform agenda with a questioning naivety, asking for simple restatements to inform their policies but without maintaining contracts of enough experts (e.g. DCMS civil servants) who have prior experience.

4) It is possible for small amounts of investment to make effective change. Why does larger scale funding often miss the mark?

I’m not sure about this one. I’d need to see a bit more evidence to prove this assertion. Not that I’m sceptical, just that it doesn’t fully accord with my experience. If there is an answer, it’s because large scale funding is usually for buildings and infrastructure, which gets spent up on project managers and concrete. Smaller education, or staff training or community projects which might have more impact on how museums deliver wellbeing are too often tied up by predetermined outcomes, often servicing those big infrastructure projects. These small projects often have conflicting outcomes, by both serving the corporate goals of growing visitors or income and serving social or learning outcomes. So, I’m not sure how common it is for small amounts of investment to make effective change, though I do concede it’s possible.

5) Is risk-taking more likely through funding of ideas and individuals or organisations and projects? Good question, one which I’ve not thought about much:

I guess this question arises from a comparison of funding of museums, where the only individuals funded are a few PhDs or researchers, compared to the arts, which is a more individualistic domain. I’d like to see more funding in the museums and heritage sector for creative enquiry, for individuals or loosely constituted teams. I’d very much like to benefit from such funding myself. However, I don’t know how much impact such individual enquiry would have on museum organisations (if that’s the way to make effective change). How much would museums have to change to allow an individual or a radical action research project to make a real difference? As I write this I’m remembering that there have been a number of individual creative research projects in museums in the field of cultural diversity, which have been exciting and have maybe helped to radicalise the profession if not the organisations themselves.

Ultimately I think this isn’t so much about individuals vs organisations, but open-ended outcomes for research vs closed outcomes that serve the most corporate aspects of an organisation’s agenda.

6) Could the ancient notion of the Commons provide a framework to deliver this change, gathering virtual and real-time communities around a desire to share and steward heritage?

Yes! And yes again. For me the Commons isn’t just an ancient notion but a current and highly relevant notion. Fundamentally, the commons are goods that are all shared (universally) and are all gifts (so, impossible to measure economically, or commodified, but important to value).  The idea of the commons sits well with taking a long view: they exist to be preserved and passed down the generations. Just right for the museum sector. The beneficiaries or owners of the commons are not just humans but all species. The commons is a principle that should be applied to both our biosphere and our digitally-powered knowledge sphere, and both need preserving as heritage and nurturing as new growth. Our knowledge sphere should be applied to preserving the biosphere as commons. Museums must start seeing their digital strategy as much more than marketing through a web presence but exposing their collections to the hive mind for this purpose. It’s much more than just a technical or legal challenge of digitisation. It’s a philosophical and educational challenge too.

7. This change can only happen if embedded within highly participatory organisations, right?

Well, yes. Participation and the commons go hand in hand. But I’ve run out of steam now. Let someone else have a go.

Five years left to cry in?

This is a reflective extension of the talk I gave at Pat Kane’s wonderful (stimulating, fun, coherent…) conference Play’s the Thing: Creative Approaches to Wellbeing. I was asked to give a practical guide on how creative and cultural approaches can be applied to communities. Wellbeing, especially in terms of health and social care, is not my specialism so I felt a little ill equipped. Also, some may ask why I focused my talk on climate and ecology? That’s because I think that human wellbeing depends entirely on a flourishing planet, and that given the dire predictions of thermogeddon within even our children’s life span, I think we can only really feel well if we turn to the purpose of averting this prospect. (I was speaking alongside Marek Kohn, who talked of our duty to future generations in the face of the climate crisis, so I was responding to his talk.) My approach may not seem to address how we ensure the wellbeing of the more vulnerable or excluded in our society, and indeed, I was gently accused of taking a rather middle class stance. However, I don’t see a conflict here: Sustainability, equality and care for others go hand in hand.

One response to the crisis is to ‘get to a place of safety’ and create small self-sufficient communities there. People who do this are called ‘Doomers’. This is an entirely legitimate response and their experiments in living can be very informative for us. However, it’s not open to most of us who need or who want to stay where we feel at home. I wonder if we might use a new term of Loomer, a more optimistic kind of Doomer. Loomers look to a difficult future looming but they also weave sustainability into the fabric of their own places. Weaving or looming is also a good metaphor for wellbeing because Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his research for his book Flow, found that weaving was consistently the activity cited as creating the most flow, or optimum engagement. It perfectly combines tradition and novelty, comfort and challenge.

So, here’s a summary of the key points I was making in my talk, and also here are my slides (as there were lots of pics).

Time: We don’t have as much of it as we might think. When I was 18 I smoked, thinking it was more important that I was seen to be like others, and that I had plenty of time left to worry about my health. I used to listen to David Bowie, and Five Years was a favourite song. I used to wonder, whimsically, whether there would come a time when we really did have five years left, because ‘earth was really dying’. Well, it turns out that at this point we do have five years left to reduce emissions drastically (to 5-9% year on year) if we want to avert thermogeddon. (Andrew Simms and Marek Kohn also made the same point.) I pointed out that it’s not just a case of reducing CO2 but tackling all the planetary boundaries as they interact with each other. Existing systems are not equipped to bring about this change, so the overall system needs overhauling. That’s a massive challenge. But, how will we feel in 5 years if that hasn’t happened?

We have no higher authority: Homer Simpson is often left alone, drunk in charge of the nuclear power station. We’re all ordinary guys, in charge of this planet. It’s up to us. There is nobody in higher authority over our governing institutions, which are made up of ordinary people. So, the system change must be about generating that higher authority in our common consciousness. We all have a contribution to make. As Tim de Christopher says “We think we have no power when in fact we have more than enough power”.

What’s my contribution? I talked about the difficulties of persuading cultural organisations to turn their mission towards sustaining life on the planet, for example, explaining to Tate why it is not ethical for them to accept sponsorship by BP. I also talked about my research towards a book, The Learning Planet, and about the theories of Flow that inform our company’s work. I’m also inspired by the work around the Common Cause Values and Frames initiative, to explore the contribution of the cultural sector to change our cultural values, or our deep frames.

What is the root issue our practice should address? The root problem is equating wellbeing with wealth. To attain wealth, we blind ourselves to or veil evidence of ecocide.

So, what are some tactics to address this? Note that my tactics place an emphasis on design, as I think it’s the creative form most suited to tackle problems yet the least discussed in gatherings about the arts. Also, I include discussion of companies in thinking about communities, as they are potentially the same thing: a collective of people for the production of common goods.

- Not pussyfooting about the difficult stuff but unveiling the ecocide. People are much happier if they can explore difficult issues and be helped to take action, even if it’s small actions, to make things better.

- Bringing fun and discomfort more closely together. I showed an example of this device that places a goldfish in a transparent water supply so it gives you a clear emotional choice whether to save water or let your pet die.

- Turning the bad into good. An update on turning guns into ploughshares is to turn carbon into a useful energy-saving material. For example, see this carbon-coated ploughshare that reduces energy use by cutting more easily through earth.

- Companies have the influence: Governments of rich nations are already giving up on the Kyoto Protocol and many care more about the interests of super-corporations than their citizens. We should focus more attention on persuading supercorps to turn towards eco-innovation, and leading by example, creating our own eco-innovative community companies. We all love Apple for their user-friendly and aesthetic design, and have made them very rich, but they are really not very green. We need to help them become more so. Philips is a more positive example: Their EcoVision5 seems on the surface to be quite a typical sustainability statement, but their product design experiments are inspirational. My father-in-law, Noel McKenzie, was chief engineer for Philips in the days of VCRs. We have to remember that companies are made up of our friends and family, people who have friends and family. We need to appeal to their humanity if we find them wanting.

- Create companies in our communities: In my neighbourhood of New Cross Gate/Telegraph Hill, we’ve created a charity called Bold Vision, as an incubator for a number of small-scale regeneration initiatives. One is the Hill Station, a cafe and arts centre, with a big emphasis on learning about food. Another is the Common Growth garden, not just for growing food but growing knowledge. Another is the New Cross People’s Library, running the library closed by Lewisham council, with a vision to become an arts and literacy centre. Transition New Cross intersects with all these initiatives. Culture is a really important aspect of Bold Vision. For example, we’ve ‘reinvented’ the ancient traditions of solstice parades particular to our area, with Garlick Man in summer (as the area was Plowed Garlick Hill) and the Night of the Beasts in winter. The idea is that these celebrations will become traditions in the future – we’re spooling heritage out forwards. If we are to think in longer horizons, we need to imagine a long future stretching before us.

- Exploit urban spaces: One project that inspires us at Bold Vision is the Farm:shop in Dalston, with its combination of artistic practice and pragmatic design for living. It is, literally, a farm in a shop, using hydroponics and aquaponics and keeping animals on the roof. They show how we can grow food in unused spaces without needing to use land as extensively as we might think. It exemplifies what Alex Steffen says, we can live sufficiently in cities and restore more of the land.

- Restore rather than exploit wilderness land: Woollen Line is a great example of imaginative and community-based ways to restore the land, and also a great example of ‘looming’. Artist Pip Woolf invites volunteers to gather unusable sheep’s wool from Black Mountain hillsides, and to make sausages or weave nets to lay on top of the peat. The top layer of peat in this part of the Black Mountain has been destroyed by fire, losing its ability to store carbon and water. It needs protecting as grass won’t easily grow back.

- Use art to reflect on building a community: Nowhereisland is another artist project where the top surface of land has been removed. There was some media fuss about this Artists Taking the Lead/Olympics project because it cost £500k. A tiny rock island exposed by Arctic melt has been towed down to English shores. Yes, it is a lot of money but now it’s spent we can make use of it to stimulate learning about citizenship and future worlds. It’s a notional state, a metaphor for a new world, and a provocation about what this world could be if we ran it. You can become a citizen and have a stake in its constitution.Hopefully it will also expose other initiatives, like the Seasteading institute, imagining and designing ways we can live with rising sea levels. Their designs are currently still in virtual form but they are not metaphorical (unlike Nowhereisland, despite its rocky reality). The group are serious about wanting to build seagoing villages.

- Use art as emotional connection: A powerful example is The Water is Rising, a USA tour of 36 performers from Tuvalu. Tuvalu is the first sovereign nation likely to be lost to rising seas. Everyone sings and dances here, so they are making full use of their resources to connect with us. The people of Tuvalu are very concerned to preserve and promote their cultural heritage in the face of a permanent tour, their inevitable future escape to a place of safety. We can connect with them because all of us, in some way or other, has been or is going to be detached from the land (or habitat, a healthy ecosystem). Our human creativity and technology will be a layer we need to weave together to protect our knowledge and heal the land, as the Woollen Line shows.

So, the turn will take place because of people, working to change the systems at the level of companies, local communities and cultural organisations. I suggested we’re all like Homer Simpson, dim ordinary drunks in charge of the planet, but we’re not all that dim really. Some people are incredible and we need to fund, treasure and learn from them. For one of many examples, look at Theo Jansen, who makes creatures who walk powered by wind.

An emerging theme at Play’s the Thing was this: The pursuit of happiness will be fruitless and labyrinthine, whereas the happiness of pursuit will bring rewards. Indy Johar said we should talk less of wellbeing and more about how to live with purpose. I agree with that wholeheartedly, but the key is in how we craft our pursuits so that they are open enough to allow us to play and explore. We can change cultures towards sustainability not by making machines or systems with narrow goals to change culture, but by helping people to imagine and make with as much openness as possible, with as much awareness of the context in which we live as is possible.

 

The climate crisis and ‘the happy museum’

Originally posted May 2010: (Since then, the Happy Museum project has launched, and funded six projects and also hosted our Flow/Renaissance toolkit on Museums for the Future)

Tomorrow I’ll be contributing to a discussion about the Happy Museum, instigated by Tony Butler and co-ordinated by the New Economics Foundation. You will have seen from my last post that I’ve just read Clive Hamilton’s ‘Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change’. So, I’m trying to gear up to talk about happiness when what I’m feeling (beneath my habitual buoyancy) is despair at the picture he paints. I’m despairing precisely because this is not a fiction, cooked up with metaphor and catharsis, but because it is a scenario rigorously underpinned by scientific consensus. The truth is: the most likely future is one in which the planet will reach 4C by 2070, which will have catastrophic impacts for humans and many other species.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, more important than that we face the fact that we have made our planet unliveable by our fetish for things. And what is a museum, fundamentally, other than a monument to our fetish for things? If it is solely that, how can I feel happy working in the museum sector? How can museums themselves be happy in this context? How can museums contribute to wellbeing, not just of people but the biosphere?

If you look at it logically (without being too linear) it is not a simple task. David Cameron said the other day that he wanted to lead the ‘greenest Government ever. It’s a very simple ambition and one I’m absolutely committed to.’ It might be simple in concept (in a nutshell: stop exploiting the earth’s resources now, pursue a no-growth strategy, invest in geo-engineering, lead the world to follow suit at an urgent pace) but it is not simple in practice. That he believes it to be simple belies the fact that environmental problems are understood to be treatable with technocratic measures. He believes, like most politicians, that you can turn down the climate dial by investing in a bit of technology, enabling some making and saving of money in the process. Hamilton said that he’s certain that the future is going to be bad, that even if we take extraordinary radical action globally we must face the fact that things are still going to be bad, but that this mustn’t stop us aiming to take that radical action.

So, how can museums help push forward that radical action? The time has come for museums to:

-          stop focusing (quite so fetishistically) on their things and start focusing on complexity and contextual education

-          to shift focus somewhat away from the past to start looking more to the future

-          to stop being so slow as a working culture and to start behaving with urgency.

But what does this mean? Responding to the key causes/solutions in Hamilton’s books, here’s the start of a list of ways that museums can, and must, contribute to tackling this crisis.

Politics above all

Hamilton shares research that says the more people understand the climate crisis the less likely they are to take individual action to green their lifestyles (though many of course may be relatively careful). They understand that the solution will not be individuals (or small organisations) making small changes. The only solutions effective enough will be international political and large-scale industrial action. Museums can and should contribute with dialogue and narrative that helps us see a bigger picture, to see how big changes have come about due to decisions made by those with material and political power.

No growth
Hamilton shows how essential it is we resist the entrenched notion that the priority in politics and the purpose of work is economic growth. Museums have been complicit in this ethos because of their role in showcasing objects of wealth, the spoils of war and exploration, and regional or national growth fuelled by technology and exploitation. Currently, museums are attempting to maintain a sense of pride while admitting alternative narratives, for example, about diverse or demotic cultures.  However, they must take several steps beyond this to critique our growth-led values. However difficult this might be, museums can be an ideal resource for this because they contain the evidence of the damage caused by growth strategies.

Work less
Hamilton analyses economics to show that saving money only defers consumption and probably increases it. We actually need to earn less, so therefore we need to work less. Many people may feel that their lives would be empty without work but perhaps museums offer us a way to see different ways to live and be productive, by showing us how different cultures have lived in the past, by inspiring creativity, or offering opportunities to do voluntary work or informal learning.

Alternative to advertising
Advertising, especially to children, has played a huge role in the increase of consumption. In 1983 companies spent $100 million on advertising to children, but by 2007 they were spending $17 billion or more. He says ‘their capacity to moderate their desires has been systematically dismantled from birth’. So, it’s even more important now that that cultural & heritage organisations engage children with non-materialistic programmes. Also, it’s important for museums to rival advertising, which might mean they have to act like marketers, by using digital social media and games much more. Museums offer a safe, secular space to help resist corporate dominance.

Global emissions
Another issue is that of consumption measured at a global level. We should not rest on our laurels of reducing emissions within the UK when a) we outsource much of our production and b) global emissions are what matter overall. Developing nations such as China, India and Russia are some of the primary emitters. Although there has been a great stress on museums developing a sense of local or regional identity (in many ways a very good policy), we shouldn’t lose sight of the potential of museums to connect us to other countries. We can enhance this by stepping up dialogue, sharing heritage knowledge and an exchange of professional practices with India, China, Russia and other countries most likely to raise global emissions. (Flow Associates is developing museum & gallery learning programmes in India and Russia, in part, for these reasons.)

Ethical sponsorship

Hamilton says ‘the most immediate reason we now face climate disruption lies in the political power of the fossil fuel lobby’. We have seen how BP & others lobbied to resist regulations that would have prevented the Deepwater Horizon spill. Museums and galleries should be scrupulous about resisting sponsorship from companies such as BP and Shell. They should pursue this as a positive strategy because as oil spills from deep water and Arctic drilling get ever blacker and dirtier, and more people see how marine pollution is a major cause of global warming, their continuing reliance on such sponsors will significantly damage reputations. Only this weekend, activists carried out an oily protest at Tate Modern, calling for Tate to wean itself from BP.

Emotion to cognition to action

Humans have evolved to respond to immediate visceral fear, but the threats of climate change require us to rely on cognitive processing. Museums have developed powerful interpretive strategies so that there are closer links between our emotional response and our grasp of big ideas. There is a danger of the museum experience being so emotive and engaging that it becomes hallucinogenic, distancing us from reality, like the way films can make disasters seem cool. Museums should plan their learning experiences so that visceral emotion leads to cognition, and then crucially, leads to action, on a personal and collective level. We (in the UK) need to develop a new framework for planning and evaluating learning and social outcomes, one which takes account of the future we face.