Climate change and environmental sustainability are among the greatest challenges facing humanity today. The RISD Museum is committed to reducing our environmental impact, finding ethical, economic and sustainable business partnerships, creating teaching and learning opportunities, and enacting best practices and policies around environmental sustainability and climate justice. We will serve as good stewards of what is now called College Hill, part of the ancestral homelands of the Narragansett Indian Tribe, and build our relationships with the Narragansett Indian Tribe and Indigenous communities. Embracing our role as an educational and civic institution, we are weaving this work into everything that we do, from programming and exhibitions to building facilities and operations.
Created in January 2021, the Climate Emergency and Sustainability (CES) Task Force includes museum staff from across departments. We prioritize sustainability in all areas through conversations and decision making. The CES Task Force implemented sustainable practices in our exhibition making process by donating excess material to students and local institutions, reusing text panels, and reducing vinyl use. We have organized free museum programs on climate and activism, and presented Take Care - a sustainability-themed exhibition that was a call to action to take care of ourselves and our planet. Learn more about the measurable actions we have taken to address climate change below.
We support and help implement measurable actions in our work and educate about climate issues both inside and outside the museum.
Goals
- Understand and reduce the Museum’s overall carbon footprint
- Create actionable policies around ethical, economic, anti-racist, and sustainability considerations including best practices for internal resource use, museum business partnerships, and funding.
- Participate in RISD campus sustainability groups
- Use public platform to position environmental sustainability and climate justice as a civic priority
Read more about CES initiatives and accomplishments here.