Championing sustainability in the museum sector

At Art Fund, we aim to champion sustainability in the sector, supporting museums and galleries in their ambition to create culturally enriching experiences with a commitment to environmental responsibility.

Through a combination of programmes and resources, we want to ensure that our current and upcoming programmes can align with broader climate goals.

Here are three examples of initiatives we’re investing in to promote and support sustainability in museums and galleries.

Sustainable touring exhibitions

In autumn 2024 we launched Rethinking Touring Exhibitions – a toolkit to reduce environmental impact in partnership with the Design Museum and The Exhibitions Group, as part of our tools and resources for museum professionals.

The toolkit explores how touring exhibitions can reduce their environmental impact while maintaining accessibility and cultural relevance. Suggestions include adopting adaptable exhibition designs to reduce resource consumption and carbon footprints during transportation, as well as collaboration between museums to share resources, building a community-driven approach to sustainability.

It signposts a variety of resources to help teams gather data and access further research to make informed decisions. Although this was created for UK institutions developing or co-producing touring exhibitions, it can be adapted for other types of projects too.

Underpinning the toolkit are the five Ps of sustainable development – People, Prosperity, Peace, Partnership and, of course, Planet. We hope it will empower cultural professionals to work with other organisations and their supply chains to develop a new best practice for the sector.

By integrating the recommendations from this toolkit, museums can make cultural experiences more inclusive and environmentally responsible.

Green travel policy

Sitting alongside Art Fund’s programmes, we have produced a Green Travel Policy, which advocates for sustainable travel practices for arts professionals and organisations receiving grants and support from us.

Acknowledging the significant impact of individual travel, the guidelines prioritise lower-carbon options, such as rail, and encourage the use of public transport or shared vehicles where possible. Air travel, when unavoidable, is advised to be limited to mitigate its environmental cost.

THE HERDS

Looking forward into spring and summer 2025, we are inviting museums in our network to take part in THE HERDS, an ambitious public art project that combines art with climate action.

This project involves a journey from Central Africa to the Arctic Circle, showcasing life-size puppet animals crafted from renewable and recyclable materials.

Supported by an educational outreach programme, the project promotes conservation, inspiring communities to engage with the natural world and take climate action. We are encouraging museums to take part, involving and engaging their audiences with these critical topics.  

The grant scheme to participate in THE HERDS with Art Fund is open for applications until 20 January. We will also be producing additional resources specifically for museums to participate in THE HERDS, to help the sector join and facilitate projects like this now and in the future. Get involved here.

The future

In producing accessible professional resources and collaborating on projects like THE HERDS we are helping the sector to rethink its approach to sustainability, addressing operational and logistical challenges while still enabling audiences to engage with the best in creativity and collections.