What We’ve Learnt

This comes from the power of taking collective action and responsibility, from learning and exchange, the diversity of responses which will come from across the sector, scaling up and of course engagement – inspiring people to act, bringing the science and issues together with creativity and storytelling, generating an emotional response that connects us and drives action.

With its resourcefulness and creativity, even a little can go a long way with the arts and culture sector. The C-Change pilot action programmes are a great example of this. With just €5-€15,000 in micro-grants per city, we had 23 pilot actions which together reached tens of thousands of citizens across the six cities in a creative, engaging and inspiring way.

In Mantova, for example, listening to the sector resulted in the city representatives becoming sector ambassadors, pushing for more sustainable services and solutions for cultural events and venues - from reusable cup schemes and bio-gas buses to bike-ins – as well as raising money for sector climate action and engagement, about €0.5 million over 2 years.

Through C-Change we have seen the power of different worlds coming together, what happens when city culture and environmental departments start working together for the first time and when artists, museums, festivals etc. come together with climate change experts, environmental NGOs and local environmental service providers. Bringing city and sector, culture and climate together is not always easy, not least as it requires getting out of your comfort zone, but it can have so many benefits: building trust in the others’ roles and skillsets, unlocking city official’s inner creativity, facilitating integrated policy-making and raising money for sector action.

Work with a ‘coalition of the willing’ and make sure whoever leads the group is someone in a position of trust with the sector. Whether top-down or bottom-up, meet-in-middle. That city-sector relationship is crucial. In Manchester, city policy kick-started sector collaboration and action in 2011. The sector then went off and did its own thing for a long time, and then years later sector and city came back together. In Águeda and in Wrocław sector collaboration is more independent of the city, whereas in other cities greater involvement and support in local groups is still very much wanted.

When we started C-Change we expected mainly culture and environment teams to be involved on the city side. In Šibenik and Mantova the ‘money people’ were involved too and this had all kinds of benefits, from sector fund-raising in Mantova, to the way in which Šibenik’s Department of Economy, Entrepreneurship and Development put its project management skills to use for arts and culture in the city and also now more actively seeks out funding for environmental projects.

It is based on a collective approach, learning and sharing.

At the heart of Manchester and the C-Change network is a sector that can help us imagine the future we want, to innovate, inspire and inform action and include and impact communities. That’s what arts and culture have got to do with climate change.