Cool off in culture poster in bus shelter

The 'Cool off in Culture' campaign invites London venues to sign up to offer the public refuge in their buildings during increasingly common heatwaves

Photo: BFI

Features

Cool off in culture

Over two thirds of arts and culture venues in London are at higher-than-average climate risk, according to new mapping. Keir Oldfield-Lewis, BFI’s head of environmental sustainability, and Nicola Saunders, ACE’s director of environmental responsibility, reflect on the challenges facing London’s cultural venues.

Keir Oldfield-Lewis and Nicola Saunders
5 min read

July has seen the UK’s first two two amber heat-health alerts of the year. They won’t be our last this summer. Long, warm evenings of tropical nights (when the temperature doesn’t drop below 20 degrees) are a bonus for the night-time economy and dry spells bring certainty for outdoor cultural programming. But when daytime temperatures reach 30 degrees and summer rainfall is more likely to be a dangerous downpour, these changing weather patterns are a sign that arts and cultural venues need to rethink their planning for long-term resilience.

Cultural venues are the lifeblood of a city. They’re where we go when we’re not working: 32,000 people watch a West End show every night; the 285 largest UK indoor visitor attractions has an average 10.4m visits a month; and 126.5m cinema tickets were sold last year.

For arts professionals, venues are often where we spend our working hours too. Culture added nearly £33bn to the UK economy last year with almost 700,000 people working in the sector.

Investment needed for environmental sustainability

But the UK is getting hotter and wetter, thanks to climate change, and our venues are struggling to cope. The BFI is launching a new Cool off in Culture campaign, inviting venues across London to sign up so the public can take refuge in our building during increasingly common heatwaves.

Working with Lambeth Climate Partnership, the BFI has developed a marketing campaign concept to be deployed as a rapid response to heat warnings via digital street signage.

Who hasn’t felt faint in a stuffy theatre or spotted a bucket catching the drips of a heavy downpour in a gallery? Visitor experience is suffering, and underinvestment is making our buildings expensive to run.

In a recent survey by the Independent Cinema Office, 60% of cinema venues said they needed capital investment for environmental sustainability. Equivalent Arts Council England data shows a strikingly similar 67% needing investment. The top repairs needed were for roofs and windows. Climate adaptation is the answer.

London Climate Action Week

The hot weather was timely for this year’s London Climate Action Week, when Arts Council England (ACE) and the British Film Institute (BFI) teamed up to host 80 arts and culture practitioners alongside climate experts to workshop plans on how to adapt.

Freelancers and representatives from nearly 60 different organisations explored maps developed by Bloomberg Associates which plot over 1,100 museums, cinemas, theatres, arts organisations and grassroots music venues against the risk of overheating, flooding and complex demographic factors for the capital.

Led by Bloomberg Associates, a pro-bono consultancy that advises city governments, this mapping is a vital first step in understanding how cultural venues can become more resilient.

Lauren Racusin who does sustainability at Bloomberg Associates said: “Knowing your organisational risks is the best way to start to plan for climate adaptation. These maps show that cultural venues across London especially face heat and flood risks, but by taking a cross-sector approach we hope venues will realise their challenges are shared and can start to tackle them together.” 

Working in partnership

As funders and leading cultural bodies, our role at ACE and the BFI is to convene and share knowledge. By fostering inclusive communities of knowledgeable people we can build solidarity for a more resilient sector. These London-wide and borough-level maps are a gift, the product of powerful partnership across public bodies, pro-bono consultancy, local community and business initiatives. Providing invaluable data, they are now freely available thanks to pioneering Julie’s Bicycle.

Our sector has always shared generously, but never more so than in the face of climate adaptation. Regents Park Open Air Theatre – at the mercy of the weather since opening nearly a century ago – has drawn up a list of existential questions about how to thrive in London’s future climate, from the durability of set materials to breathable wigs and the future of the matinée. They are also trialling earlier start times to avoid the mid-afternoon heat.

Building collective action

Adapting how we work is one thing, but adapting what we are for is another. The Museum of Homelessness has demonstrated that cultural venues can be part of the fabric of modern public health. Their research on severe weather emergencies has shown that the climate crisis is a public health crisis for vulnerable people. Providing shelter, food and a community for those most exposed to increasingly extreme weather, brings additional purpose to arts and culture venues.

Guidance abounds on how to plan: engineers from BuroHappold and standards creators BSI have signposted resources from the sector and beyond, but time and funding remain barriers to progress.

Back in February, the government announced £270m for arts and cultural venues, particularly for infrastructural work and long-term financial resilience. When the ONS estimates that the UK loses an average of £1.2bn per year due to hot days, climate resilience is long-term financial resilience.

Collective action is building from the conversations begun at London Climate Action Week in planning the Fit for the Future’s Climate Resilience Conference this November. While the hot weather continues, arts and cultural venues are important spaces in a climate-conscious public health response.