Six NEMO members joined the training free of charge thanks to the partnership between NEMO and ENCATC and five received a travel grant to cover the costs associated with travelling to Santander. The four-day training allowed the participants to dive deeper into the topic of sustainability and presented several networking opportunities. Each day started with a focus area followed by study visits or special presentations: Sustainable cultural tourism, Museums in the climate crisis, Environmental sustainability in the digital age, Greening cultural institutions and Sustainable international cultural institutions.
NEMO invited members to a training on sustainable cultural management
The participants of the ENCATC Academy on sustainable cultural management and policy.
In total 24 participants from 15 different countries and 4 continents joined the training. The 6 selected NEMO members came from Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Wales (the UK). At the training we were pleased to learn that two additional persons from NEMO member organisation had joined at their own cost.
On Tuesday 25 April, NEMO Communications Officer Rebecca Thonander presented the network, its work regarding climate change and sustainability as well as its research on museums in the climate crisis. She introduced the 8 recommendations that are presented in the research together with supporting graphs from the survey results. To illustrate the recommendations, the Guggenheim Bilbao was mentioned as an example that connects to Relevance, Framework and guidelines, Infrastructure, Education and Alliances. Learn more about these recommendations and the other four in the report Museums in the climate crisis – Survey results and recommendations for the sustainable transition of Europe. Being especially interested in the digital aspects of sustainability, Thonander informed the participants about NEMO’s actions so far to reduce the networks environmental impact and carbon emission due to digital actives. These actions include participating in the Digital Cleanup Day and reducing the size of images stored on the website.
The participants in the ENCATC Academy also got to meet with sustainability pioneers from the local creative industries of Santander such as fashion designer Odette Álvarez Atelier and gallerist JUAN SILIÓ. In an inspiring session by Centro Botín, the participants got to discuss the public private partnership policy of the museum and learn how the museum, which opened in 2017, contributed to urban regeneration and transformation. As the new museum was being built, a tunnel to direct traffic underground instead of above ground was written into the construction plan. Thanks to redirecting traffic, the citizens of Santander and visitors may enjoy a park and leisure activities where the big road used to be located.
In connection to this, the speaker of a presentation on sustainable tourism explained that the museum also has helped attract new types of tourists. The tourism office is looking into ways of catering to them and explore the museum’s role in city branding and making Santander an attractive city destination in the off-season to spread out visitors as to not overcrowd the city.
About the main organiser
ENCATC, the European network on cultural management and policy, represents, advocates, and promotes cultural management and cultural policy education, professionalizes the cultural sector to make it sustainable, and creates a platform for discussion and exchange at European and international level.
ENCATC has organised the annual Academy since 2012. The learning format provides an intense learning experience with a mixed methodology including lectures and seminars, enhanced with experts from the field.
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