On January 16th, the Ontario Museums Association hosted a webinar titled "Climate Change: Implications for your museum practice." Thankfully, if you missed it, you can still find it embedded at the bottom of this article.
There is a certain humility that you must adopt as an institution attempting to address an issue as large as global climate change. This humility includes putting your trust in other groups, to let your own mission serve as a piece (and only a piece) of something greater. Laurie Carmount shared that the following quote is painted on a wall at Nature's Place:
Museums are not the species. We are the individual-- part of a much larger web, infinite and wonderful and more delicate than we can possibly imagine. When we make that paradigm shift, when we stop thinking of museums as a network unto themselves and begin thinking of ourselves as points of a much, much wider network, we can begin to think of our impact in a very different way. No individual caused this problem, and no individual can fix it. But no species is made up of anything other than many individuals working together.
So call your MP.
Reduce your plastic consumption.
And think about how your institution can begin working as part of a much, much larger system in a time of crisis.
I've been thinking about Climate Change more and more the past few months, for obvious reasons, and it can be a hard topic to dwell on without succumbing to angst and despair. When I heard about this webinar, I was looking forward to a talk that gave some direction to that amorphous, all-consuming dread.
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| A Photo of the Anthropocene exhibit at the AGO- pictured here, an example of the "good Anthropocene"; these are part of lithium processing, increasingly necessary for the creation of electric vehicles. Photo courtesy of Samantha Kilpatrick. |
Moderated by Robert Janes, founder and Co-chair of Museums for Climate Justice, the webinar featured three museum professionals discussing initiatives they had enacted in their own institutions to address the climate crisis we as a species have found ourselves living in.
Laurie Carmount, Curator of Minden Hills Cultural Centre & Nature’s Place, spoke about her efforts in using historic collections to demonstrate what a world without plastic might look like, her efforts to improve the sustainability of the physical buildings these sites operate within, and partnerships with local environmental groups.
Shiralee Hudson Hill, Lead Interpretive Planner at the Art Gallery of Ontario, spoke about Anthropocene and the effect of the exhibition rippling through the institution, from attempts to reduce plastic in the gallery's cafeteria and the emotional push in interpretive planning- "revelatory, not accusatory.
Ian Kerr-Wilson, Manager of Heritage Resource Management for the City of Hamilton, spoke about incorporating municipal priorities around sustainability into museum practice, and the use of museums as a tool to work on a problem, rather than an end unto themselves.
Laurie Carmount, Curator of Minden Hills Cultural Centre & Nature’s Place, spoke about her efforts in using historic collections to demonstrate what a world without plastic might look like, her efforts to improve the sustainability of the physical buildings these sites operate within, and partnerships with local environmental groups.
Shiralee Hudson Hill, Lead Interpretive Planner at the Art Gallery of Ontario, spoke about Anthropocene and the effect of the exhibition rippling through the institution, from attempts to reduce plastic in the gallery's cafeteria and the emotional push in interpretive planning- "revelatory, not accusatory.
Ian Kerr-Wilson, Manager of Heritage Resource Management for the City of Hamilton, spoke about incorporating municipal priorities around sustainability into museum practice, and the use of museums as a tool to work on a problem, rather than an end unto themselves.
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| A photo of Hamilton's Ice Harvesting Industry, which Ian Kerr-Wilson notes doesn't exist anymore "for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the harbour doesn't freeze anymore." Image via Hamilton Public Library. |
I am firmly of the opinion that we have now moved beyond the 'raising awareness' stage of the climate crisis. This is not to say that we should stop trying to convince those around us that this is a pressing and important issue, or that convincing people is a waste of time (as many as 8% of Americans have changed their minds in the past year about climate change) but if the only action we are taking as institutions is raising awareness, it will soon be too late to do anything.
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| Cathedral Grove, British Colombia. The key to wanting to save nature is to love it, but I wonder also at the heartbreak of loss that comes with that, the present certainty of knowing that many of the places you love will be forever changed by climate change that you are helping to cause. Photo courtesy of Samantha Kilpatrick. |
“Nature is careless of the individual but careful of the species. We have reversed the maxim; we are careful of the individuals and careless of the species. That is the road to extinction. If you kill the species, the individual will follow.” —R.D. Lawrence
Museums are not the species. We are the individual-- part of a much larger web, infinite and wonderful and more delicate than we can possibly imagine. When we make that paradigm shift, when we stop thinking of museums as a network unto themselves and begin thinking of ourselves as points of a much, much wider network, we can begin to think of our impact in a very different way. No individual caused this problem, and no individual can fix it. But no species is made up of anything other than many individuals working together.
So call your MP.
Reduce your plastic consumption.
And think about how your institution can begin working as part of a much, much larger system in a time of crisis.
