Bridget McKenzie, Director, Flow Associates
Bridget will draw on her background as consultant and manager in cultural learning, including as Head of Learning at the British Library, and on lessons from her current project developing Climate Museum UK. She will introduce some guiding principles for being ‘possitopian’ about the future and having an ecocentric worldview in the context of the Earth crisis. This will lead to some proposals about how eco-capacities could inform the public services and leadership of libraries.
#CILIPConf20
#LibrariesforSustainability
6. Climate Museum UK
A mobile and digital museum stirring and
collecting responses to the climate and
ecological emergency.
A team of creative people based in the UK,
passionate about the planet, we produce and
gather art, objects, ideas, games and books,
and then use these to activate people.
These activations help people to play, make,
think and talk about the Earth crisis and to
open their imaginations to possible futures.
16. Imagination: What if…?
● Libraries as places of refuge
● Meeting spaces for activism
● Libraries of Things
● Maker spaces
● Gardens of knowledge
● Communities co-create
handbooks for thriving
17. How can libraries be part of a regenerative future?
● Declare emergency! Action means stop harm + adapt
to inevitable continued harm
● Model being possitopian - imagine possible futures
● Help people develop eco-capacities
● Play your strongest card in this - develop imagination
and literacy
CILIP has approached sustainability through the SDGs (Agenda 2030, Global Goals). These “are important to our sector as in order to achieve all seventeen goals access to information and the skills necessary to use that information is vital.” Bridget will draw on her background as consultant and manager in cultural learning, including as Head of Learning at the British Library, and on lessons from her current project developing Climate Museum UK. She will introduce some guiding principles for being ‘possitopian’ about the future and having an ecocentric worldview in the context of the Earth crisis. This will lead to some proposals about how eco-capacities could inform the public services and leadership of libraries.
Archives, capturing heritage, libraries as world’s knowledge
Increasingly digital - was there as the grand challenge of digitisation began
Breaking boundaries between museums, archives, libraries & journalism - foregrounding the value of capturing knowledge & experience for access by the commons
We’re going in the direction of knowledge and imagination
Yes, the future is extremely worrying. This is a way of representing the future - as a cone. The widest extent of the cone is the ‘possible’ - and it gets wider as time goes on. And it gets even wider as the impacts of climate change and ecocide intersect.
Our most unique principle is being possitopian. To expand the cone of possible futures in ways that are both realistic and full of hope for humanity. To avoid people being in fixed positions of either dystopia or utopia.
An example of possitopian and authentic leadership - Doughnut economics. How we can live well within limits of the planetary boundaries
Leaders of culture, and educators and parents, and workers in every sector really, need to develop eco-capacities. It’s bigger than eco-literacy. This model could be seen as a curriculum for children, but essentially it’s what we need in our workplaces. Use this to talk about Scarborough Museums Trust
CILIP has approached sustainability through the SDGs (Agenda 2030, Global Goals). These “are important to our sector as in order to achieve all seventeen goals access to information and the skills necessary to use that information is vital.” Bridget will draw on her background as consultant and manager in cultural learning, including as Head of Learning at the British Library, and on lessons from her current project developing Climate Museum UK. She will introduce some guiding principles for being ‘possitopian’ about the future and having an ecocentric worldview in the context of the Earth crisis. This will lead to some proposals about how eco-capacities could inform the public services and leadership of libraries.