New project: Creative Climate Futures
Glasgow is already feeling the impacts of climate change. This includes milder, wetter winters, more summer heatwaves, and more frequent, heavier downpours. We need to build resilience to these impacts and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to climate change. This means our neighbourhoods will need to look and feel very different if they are to flourish in the future.
Change will need to be collaborative, with communities having an equal seat at the table and given real power to drive forward the changes they know are needed. Through a new project, Creative Climate Futures, communities across Glasgow are invited to collaborate with decision-makers, technical experts and artists to understand what climate change means for their neighbourhoods, imagine climate ready futures, and speed up local action to make these a reality. The project will have climate justice at its centre – recognising that our response to climate change must also tackle inequality and its underlying causes. Creative Climate Futures will combine this approach with arts and creativity to help Glasgow neighbourhoods drive action to create the futures they want.
From now until March 2025, Creative Climate Futures will work with organisations and local residents in two “pioneer” neighbourhoods in Glasgow to understand what climate change means locally, to imagine what climate ready futures might look like, and to speed up local action to make these a reality. Our pioneer neighbourhoods are Easterhouse, and Hutchesontown & Laurieston, two of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change – where flooding and overheating are more likely, and where underlying social and economic inequalities might make it harder for communities to respond to these impacts.
We are also inviting organisations from across Glasgow to get involved with the project, through a city-wide learning, training and capacity sharing programme, starting in 2024. The programme will support community organisations across the city to act on their local priorities – If you want your organisation to be involved, please email creativeclimatefutures@sniffer.org.uk. The Creative Climate Futures team will work with Climate Ready Clyde to share project learning, generate ideas and collaborate to strengthen Climate Ready Clyde’s community programme and aim to scale up climate action to a more regional scale.
Creative Climate Futures is led by sustainability charity Sniffer, working with Creative Carbon Scotland, Community Land Scotland, Glasgow Council for the Voluntary Sector, the Scottish Communities Climate Action Network and Glasgow City Council. Creative Climate Futures is funded by the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. The funding has been awarded through Glasgow City Council’s Communities and Place Fund.
