Today, and every day, is Earth Day. We have made a committment to work with our community towards a sustainable future. Building the museum of the future means ensuring there is a future!
We believe that every museum can play a vital part in the shift to a low-carbon future. Recent years have seen an increasing number of initiatives focused on climate change across science, art, natural history and ethnographic museums, with exhibitions, events, festivals, and national and international partnerships aimed at raising awareness and shifting narratives.
Our Canmore Museum Re-Imagined Strategy has Building Sustainability as one of our core strategic pillars. Our goal is make intentional decisions to minimize our environmental footprint both individually and organizationally, and work to increase energy efficiency and reduce waste. This means going beyond recycling to driving down waste and finding ways to consume less power, less paper and working towards lowering carbon emissions.
We are just beginning to learn how museums can contribute to climate action. We are joining organizations like Ki Culture (https://www.kiculture.org/) to get the tools we need to be effective in a contributing towards a more sustainable future.
We believe that there is MUCH to learn from the Stoney Nakoda regarding environmental stewardship. We look forward to learning more and to working with them to amplify their teachings.
In our On The Table: Community, Museums and The Future event, we invited Doug Worts who has been encouraging museums to address both environmental and community sustainability for over 25 years to share his thoughts with us. His notes from that talk can be found here: https://canmoremuseum.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Inside-Outside-Model-Slides-Handout-Canmore.pdf
We have also been talking with Bob Janes, another internationally respected local museologist and author of the several books on museums, advocacy, and change who champions museums as important social institutions capable of making a difference in their communities.
We are very grateful for the discussions and encouragement we have received from both of these individuals as we seek to put actions to the intent spelled out in our Re-Imagined strategy.
As we look to build the museum of the future, we need to ensure that there is a future. Climate action = community and organizational sustainability. Won’t you join us? We’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can be more sustainable in our actions
