About Creative Carbon Scotland

Creative Carbon Scotland believes in the essential role of the arts, screen, cultural and creative industries in contributing to the transformational change to a more environmentally sustainable Scotland.

We work directly with individuals, organisations and strategic bodies engaged across cultural and sustainability sectors to harness the role of culture in achieving this change. Through year-round work and one-off projects, we combine strategic expertise and consultancy, bespoke carbon management training and guidance, and a range of programmes supporting the development of artistic practices that address sustainability and climate change.

Creative Carbon Scotland is committed to actively promoting equality and diversity in all our work, events and recruitment processes. We recognise that a diverse and inclusive movement is critical to solving climate change and that we must ensure that those directly impacted – particularly those who have been excluded in the past – are at the centre of the movement for change. We value the range of views and experiences that our team members, sector colleagues and all those we work with contribute to our thinking.

Get in touch to explore how we can collaborate, or if you are interested in supporting our work financially.

Our outcomes

By 2026…​

• Scotland’s cultural sector will be implementing ambitious plans to mitigate carbon emissions and adapt to the future climate in line with national targets​
• The cultural sector will be recognised as an essential actor in achieving the transformational change required for Scotland to thrive in a zero-carbon and climate-changed world​
• More organisations outwith the cultural sector will seek to work with cultural practitioners to achieve their climate change objectives

Background

Since Creative Carbon Scotland started the journey in 2011 to embed environmental sustainability within the arts and cultural sector in Scotland, the organisation itself has developed enormously. From aiming to help arts organisations to report their carbon emissions – no small task in itself but one which is well under way – we are now focusing on exploring the sector’s role in transforming our society to address climate change. This is a much larger job but we believe that it offers great benefits for both the sector and society as a whole.

The scientific evidence is clear: the way in which we all live on this planet poses immediate and present challenges that will affect the future for everyone.  The Paris Agreement adopted at the recent UN negotiations demonstrates the wide recognition of this and what it means, both how society must change in order to reduce climate change as much as possible and how it will inevitably change in response to the changes that are already happening. Environmental sustainability is therefore an urgent issue and one that we believe Scotland’s cultural sector cannot ignore.

A broad definition of culture is our way of life, the way we ‘be’, incorporating our language, politics and values as well as the arts and humanities[1]. What we often term ‘culture’ – the arts, museums, film, TV, design, advertising – are the ways in which we consciously and unconsciously express that wider culture and also an important way in which it is shaped, informed, disseminated and changed. Therefore, not only does the cultural sector have huge potential to change and influence the complex system that is the society in which we live, it is essential that it endeavours to do so.

The cultural sector deals in the values that are intrinsic to such change. It speaks as a trusted messenger to large numbers of people. It engages with groups including the widest public, artists, suppliers, transport providers and policy makers at all levels. It can enable public opinion to change by changing its own behaviours and practices.

Finally, and crucially, it also has a unique ability – indeed the playwright Bertolt Brecht might say a duty – to imagine and experiment with alternative futures, question the status quo, see the world differently and explore the future with audiences and participants. Without the cultural sector playing its part in helping current and future society to move towards a more sustainable way of life, this essential shift will not happen.

Watch Ben Twist’s TED talk – ‘Why the arts are essential in addressing climate change’

[1] Mexico City Declaration on Cultural Policies, UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies, Mexico City, 1982

Oil Sponsorship Free

We do not take any oil, coal, or gas corporate sponsorship for our cultural work. We call on our peers and institutional partners to refuse fossil fuel funding too.

See the full list of signatories.