We Are Still In

Out of the blue, a new Ransom Note From the Future!

It's been an important week.

AAM's Environment & Climate Network announced it's name-change, one that moves from sustainability to addressing climate as well.

The Network hosted two webinars introducing the Cultural Institutions sector of We Are Still In to individual institutions and to membership networks.

There were private calls and emails with interested organizations to help them sign on.

We were asked to send copies of the recordings and slide decks to some who were unable to attend.

So we scheduled extra calls for July (11, 18 & 26).

Then New England Aquarium signed on.

Meanwhile, Museum magazine came out chock full of sustainability articles, and leading with AAM's Laura Mott's endorsement of We Are Still In for cultural institutions: "I encourage you to consider joining them and take the "We Are Still In" pledge this summer," she wrote.

Then a regional museum association said it was interested in signing on, too.

Meanwhile, the We Are Still In Steering Committee met to talk about the run up to the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco this fall. The list of museums, zoos, gardens, aquariums and historic sites is growing, and growing enough to send a valuable message during the Summit.

It's been a stunning week, long in the making, hard to wait for, and just incredible to experience. We are showing the world that the significant abilities, resources, and influence of our sector can help address our greatest social, scientific, and economic challenge ever: climate change.

So, will you listen in to our calls, or have a private one with me? Will you go to the website yourself? www.wearestillin.com Then will you sign on and help us tell the world that America is Still In the Paris Agreement because we care about our World? 'Cause we do. 

Museums & UN Sustainable Development Goals: I

"When we lift [up] our eyes from the present struggles -- politics, health crises, homelessness and hate -- and look around with a view to the larger world, what do we see?

More of the same."

Not only, this of course, but it is what draws our attention. That is what symptoms do: draw your attention; but they're not the problems. The world's on-the-surface struggles are rooted in poverty and inequality, lack of education and valued work, economic imbalances, and source scarcity, anxiety, and depletion.

That text is from The Value of History column on "Museums and the Paris Agreement" in History News written for the American Association for State and Local History (Autumn 2017, Vol 72, #4). In it I gave examples for ways history museums and historic sites can address 12 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development goals (SDGs). For any other type of museum I could prepare the same article with as much alignment with the SDGs, and an unlimited variety of ways to do that good work.

For 2018 this blog space will include examination of the ways science centers, art museums, zoos, aquariums, museums and historic sites can support the SDGs. I'll start here with historic site and museum examples, but I hope you will offer your own ideas and examples. Together we can make it easier for our peers to join us in #museumsforparis. Together we can show the world that #wearestillin.

SDG#1 No Poverty (End poverty in all its forms everywhere)

Historic sites that were settlement houses, such as Jane Addams' Hull-House Museum or the House of the Seven Gables, provide programming that examine homelessness, poverty, and the need for social networks to support community members, and inspire people to personal and collective action.

These issues are not so far from each of us or our neighbors, and they are common for so many outside our own worlds. A divorce or a job loss, a serious injury or illness, a natural disaster, or an act of terrorism can upend a life, a family, and communities. How can we help ourselves or others if we do not understand these issues, learn to process them, and determine how to respond? We can come to understand these issues and ourselves, and what we can do to create change, through the work of historic sites. The House of the Seven Gables envisions this as "Unbounded, Magnified Good."

SDGs #6, #11, and #15 Clean Water & Sanitation, Sustainable Cities &Communities, and Life on Land
If we tallied museums' and historic sites' landscapes (water and land, garden and yards), and all the hard surfaces (roofs, parking lots, walkways, patios), think of all the surface area we have to turn to environmental advantage! Historic sites often have more impact here than many other types of museums. Farm landscape can be managed organically; historic energy and water systems (fish ponds, water turbines, windmills) can be restored and operated to reduce impact, and you can restore historic habitats for native species and natural services lost to urban development. Historic sites have tremendous opportunity to support their missions and SDGs at the same time.

• Is water runoff from your site clean? 
• Does it tax municipal treatment systems or put neighbors or downstream residents at risk? 
• What could you do to make sure all water leaves your property cleaner than when it arrived? 
• Does your site make your city more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable? 
• Do you have a green roof or walls that keeps the community cooler, creates habitat for species, and saves energy while providing visual and emotional benefits? 
• Is your garden space or central atrium or whole site programmed and accessible to appeal to all, and encourage inclusion?
• How about biodiversity?
• Does your property contribute to biodiversity? 
• Does your programming or research? 
• Can you convert that hardscape into greenscape? 
• When you have to repave that parking lot, is it the opportunity you need to install a permeable system to reduce stormwater management construction and processing?
• Or can you create a catchment system to create habitat while avoiding stormwater management construction and processing? 

This work is far easier than it appears. It aligns with much of what we already do. It requires no mission creep, no extra money, no change in programming. You could do all that, but you don't need to. 

All it requires is thinking intentionally about how our institutions support the common good - oh wait, that's what we do every day, we just didn't see before how it aligns with the global good. 

Now we do. Contact me, please. Join #museumsforparis    sarah@sustainablemuseums.net 

#MuseumsforParis

This traffic safety poster sends an important
message that applies to museums and
their communities, humans and the globe

Would your institution sign onto the Paris Agreement?Are you in? Do you want to help your city or state contribute to meeting the United States carbon reduction goals?

These institutions (updated 6/26/2018) support the Paris Agreement Goals and have signed on to #WeAreStillIn - and you?

1. California Academy of Sciences
2. The Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden
3. Monterey Bay Aquarium
4. Michigan Science Center
5. The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
6. The Brick Store Museum
7. The Abbe Museum
8. Science Museum of Minnesota
9. Sangre de Cristo Arts & Conference Center
10. Strawbery Banke Museum
11. North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
12. Madison Children's Museum
13. South Street Seaport Museum
14. American Swedish Institute
15. The Climate Museum
16. The Field Museum 
17. New England Aquarium

If the answer is yes, then please share your commitment by using the hashtag #museumsforparis when you make your announcement and share ideas.

SPECIAL NOTE: Climate Interactive, a DC nonprofit, is collecting our listings to add to its US Map of supporters. So use #MuseumsforParis to let me, @greenmuseum, and @bethsawin, know you are showing your climate moxie.

Then, let your city know, and track your contribution.  Last but not least, let We Are Still In know that you are committed: sign on as an educational institution. They adopted the Cultural Institutions sector, so we know we are making the right impression.