Culture Counts Responds to the Scottish Government's Draft Environment Strategy
Culture Counts recently submitted a response to Scottish Government’s consultation on the draft environment strategy, the stated purpose of which is:
The draft Environment Strategy sets out a holistic framework for delivering Scotland’s role in tackling the global crises of nature loss, climate change and pollution. It brings together our existing policy response to tackling these crises and builds on these by outlining new priorities and proposals.
The consultation covered a broad range of areas, across biodiversity, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, climate justice, adaption and mitigation. We sought to provide quite a targeted response, highlighting the culture sector’s potential as an enabler and driver of change.
Question 1: Do you agree with the vision of the Environment Strategy?
Culture Counts broadly agrees with the strategy’s vision. We believe the vision would be strengthened by including explicit recognition of the role of Scotland’s world leading culture sector as an enabler and driver of change. In 2022, 88% of Scots engaged with culture (1) and 84% agree that Scotland is a creative nation (2).
Across Scotland, at national, local and individual levels, culture in its multitude of forms plays a role in shaping societal attitudes. Cultural opportunities have the power to improve our communities, with recent Scottish Government research finding that the majority of Scots agreed that culture and the arts make a positive difference to their local communities (3), and further research from DCMS finding strong evidence that engaging with the arts enhances social cohesion. (4)
Therefore, there is undoubtedly a pivotal role for culture to play in enabling the economic and societal transformations set out in the strategy. This can be best achieved by embedding culture in the strategic vision.
An example of an ongoing project which exemplifies the role that culture can play in enabling communities to respond to climate change can be found in Culture for Climate Scotland’s Sea Change Project (5).
(Information copied from Culture for Climate Scotland’s website): Sea Change: Co-creating coastal futures is a multi-year, action-research project running until June 2027. We are working with local artists to help two coastal communities – Montrose and Buckie – develop ways of responding to climate change in their area and influencing decisionmakers. Culture for Climate Scotland is leading the project in partnership with NatureScot, the Scottish Government Marine Directorate and the Open University, with funding from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and NatureScot.
Sea Change is designed to bring together communities, artists and decisionmakers across various spheres to provide the evidence needed to help make the case for interdisciplinary arts-climate work and increase its influence at a systemic and policy level. The process will involve working with local communities, anchor organisations and embedded artists in Montrose and Buckie, locations that will be heavily affected by climate change.
1 https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-household-survey-2022-key-findings/pages/11/
3 https://www.gov.scot/publications/cultural-engagement-scotland-matter/pages/9/
5 https://cultureforclimate.scot/project/sea-change/
Question 2: Are there any outcomes that you feel should be removed, added or changed in the Environment Strategy?
Culture Counts recommend that specific reference to culture as an enabler be included within the society outcome pathway. Without this, the pathway risks underplaying the role of cultural participation, storytelling and creative industries in helping people understand risks and imagine alternatives
Relating to the economy outcome pathway, we would ask whether further development of the strategy could take learning from strategem such as the UK’s 2023 Creative Industries plan (6), which sets out how at a UK level, the creative industries are positioned to benefit from economic opportunities, job creation and business growth opportunities arising from the transition to net zero.
In relation to the resilience outcome pathway, we would cite the following projects, research and campaigns as being of significant relevance in terms of opportunities for greater embedding of culture in the strategy: British Film Institute’s 2025 Cool off in Culture Campaign (7), Climate Risk Mapping for Cultural Venues by Bloomberg Associates (8), and Equity’s “Too Hot to Work” campaign (9).
7 https://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/magazine/feature/cool-off-in-culture
8 https://juliesbicycle.com/resource/climate-risk-mapping-for-londons-cultural-venues/
9 https://www.equity.org.uk/campaigns-policy/too-hot-to-work
Question 7: To what extent do you agree/disagree that societal changes, including in our lifestyles and behaviours, are needed to help tackle the nature, climate and pollution crises?
If you agree, please explain in the text box below how you think the Scottish Government could most effectively support and enable these changes in ways that also help to improve people’s lives and tackle inequalities.
Culture Counts strongly agree that societal changes as highlighted above and in the draft strategy are an important component of change, alongside corporate and Government actions, all needed to tackle the nature, climate and pollution crises. Further, we believe that culture is positioned to enable and support these changes, but only if sufficient resource and infrastructure exists.
Culture helps people make sense of change and connects national policy with lived experience. We have recently highlighted that culture should be embedded in statutory wellbeing definitions and duties (10), ensuring it is recognised as a driver of behaviour and systems change.
The Scottish Government can most effectively enable these changes by resourcing cultural organisations and freelancers to deliver programmes that inspire, educate and convene communities. There are strong models to build on: the Climate Spring Prize shows how the arts can engage people in imagining sustainable futures (11); Julie’s Bicycle provides practical tools to help freelancers adopt greener practices (12); Barcelona’s Climate Shelters network demonstrates how cultural infrastructure can provide safe community spaces during climate shocks (13); and Equity’s “Too Hot to Work” campaign underlines the importance of protecting cultural workers in extreme heat (14).
These examples are early illustrations of what is possible. Even greater results could be enabled in Scotland by embedding culture in this Strategy, and through investment to support it.
11 https://climatefictionprize.co.uk/
12 https://juliesbicycle.com/resource/creative-freelancers-climate-almanac/
13 https://www.barcelona.cat/barcelona-pel-clima/en/specific-actions/climate-shelters-network
14 https://www.equity.org.uk/campaigns-policy/too-hot-to-work
Question 8: Do you have any further views on how the pathway outlined in the draft Strategy can help achieve the outcome “Scotland’s society is transformed for the better by living sustainably, in harmony with nature”?
The pathway should explicitly name cultural participation as a delivery mechanism. Storytelling and creative engagement are uniquely effective in shifting behaviours, as set out in our response to Question 7.
In addition, the Strategy should recognise the evidence base for culture’s reach and impact already noted in Question 1 and build on existing sector-led projects that demonstrate how culture can help communities respond to climate change.
By drawing on these approaches, the Strategy can ensure culture is not an add-on but a core part of how society transitions to living sustainably, in harmony with nature.