 The Full StoryArts Council England embeds environmental sustainability into funding agreements
Arts Council England’s Chief Executive Alan Davey used the recent TippingPoint event in Newcastle, to announce that ACE will be the first arts funding body in the world to embed environmental sustainability into the funding agreements of its major programmes. As a minimum requirement, from April, National Portfolio Organisations and Major Partner Museums will need to measure and improve their water and energy use over the next three years. Davey gave ACE's further commitment to embedding environmental sustainability into all of its funding programme over the next ten years.
He announced ACE's partnership with Julie's Bicycle who will provide support and expertise directly to funded arts and cultural organisations. Davey added, “Organisations like Tipping Point, Platform and Cape Farewell are leading the way in providing opportunities for artists to creatively engage with these issues”.
“Climate change is an enormous existential challenge, requiring us to address profound and difficult questions about how we live. Many of us understand the horrific impact climate change is beginning to have, but at the same time the scale of the collective action we need to take and the changes needed to avert this disaster seem almost incomprehensibly huge,” Davey said.
“In many ways the global failure to deal with climate change represents one of the greatest collective failures of imagination in human history, something which I think the arts, and in particular artists, can help redress.”
The full text of Davey's speech is here.
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