Peter Gingold focuses on climate change in the cultural sector

Peter Gingold

Thanks, Chris. I don't know if anyone saw him on the television with Nigel Lawson the other day and he deserves a medal for not actually taking him by the scruff of the neck and throttling him!

My name's Peter Gingold. I'm a director of an organisation called Tipping Point and, if you just give me a couple of minutes, the vast part of today's effort is about yourselves but I just want to explain why I'm here. We … our, my organisation focuses entirely on these, if you like, the intersection between climate change and the cultural sector and the arts. We're interested in where, where those two meet and trying to help stimulate more activity there. And what we believe, we believe two things, I think. One is that Chris is right. Chris, I've heard him give presentations like that over a number of years and, on the whole, as with other people in this sector, the tone gets a little bit more downbeat as the years go by and people, consistently scientists, as I'm sure most of you know, find themselves saying 'it's worse than we thought'. And the other thing we believe in is that the cultural sector is really the right … is very, very strongly positioned to take the lead on this.

Why is that? Because I think at heart this issue is about the way we live, it's about who we are, what our relationship is with each other and the planet. And the cultural sector is perfectly positioned, I believe, to hold up a mirror to that and actually show us how we live, give us, give us … help us develop insights in that. Now, our … the way see things is divided into two. It's partly about the work itself and the material that's on exhibition in galleries and so on, and the work of living artists as well, and that's clearly an issue which requires enormous subtlety and it's a very difficult and interesting challenge for curators, for artists to work out how do they respond to climate change. And then there's another bit which we can sort of somewhat simplistically but hopefully distinguish from that, which is the nuts and bolts of what we do, the, the way buildings work, the way touring happens, the way audiences move around, etc, etc, - the practical things. And so that's clearly what we're here to do, to talk about today.

[There followed an exercise where participants were asked to position themselves in the room under a sign that best described where their institution was currently placed, using a scale of just beginning to recognise the need for action for climate change to being fully compliant.]