‘Tate: Power to Change’ with Cara Courage | Meetup Summary (January 14, 2021)

The first online community meetup organised by We Are Museums for the year 2021 was tagged “Tate: Power to Change with Cara Courage”. This session gathered about thirty museum professionals already working or wishing to tackle the climate crisis and come up with solutions to start the ecological transition in their museums.

About our guest

Dr. Cara Courage is a placemaking and arts activist, museum academic practitioner, and head of Tate Exchange. She is also the author of ‘Arts in Place’; ‘The Arts, the Urban, and Social Practice’ published in 2017; the co-editor of ‘Creative Placemaking’ published in 2018; and the editor of ‘The Routledge Handbook of Placemaking’, just released in 2021.

Tate: Power to Change

Care Courage outlines Tate’s activities in response to climate and ecological emergencies by introducing a new program that approaches this from the intersection of institutions and sects of views. Her methods provided a guide to a deeper understanding of the different stages Tate has been through for the past few years and the upcoming ones.

Some of the remarkable achievements of Tate towards climate emergencies include the significant reduction of carbon footprints by 40% from 2007 to 2008. Interestingly, in 2019, Tate made a commitment to further reduce carbon footprints by 10% by the year 2023. To achieve this feat, Tate considered the heating system, lighting system, ventilation, and solar power generation, among others, as possible avenues for carbon reduction.

Tate also adopted the use of renewable energy and encouraged sustainability in the process. The sustainability practices, policies, and protocols of renewable energy suppliers were one of the key criteria that influenced Tate’s choice of renewable energy supplier.

Cara averred that the notion was exactly what everyone ought to embrace, especially at the retail level.

Tate Stat Facts

Do you know that Tate welcomes about 5–6 million people a year and has 14 different places where you could either get tea or coffee? Now, consider the huge amount of catering waste that would come from that.

What Tate has done to address this has simply been phenomenal over the years. In fact, 9 tonnes of glass have been removed from Tate’s supply chain, and over 330,000 pieces of plastic have also been removed from Tate’s waste. In total, about 70% of the waste at Tate is recycled, and the rest is incinerated through an energy furnace incineration scheme.

What is ‘Power to Change’ and Why Do We Need It?

What Tate has done since 2007/2008 is “for me, for you, and for us.”. Although this hasn’t been easy, Tate is a big organization with massive contingent factors across the building sites, the teams, divisions, suppliers, and so on. This has led to a remarkable challenge faced at Tate in 2019 and beyond, where every idea has to be deeply considered because of the contingent factors. The good news is, despite the challenges, Tate continues to work at a much faster pace than before. One of the results of the immense work at Tate is the development of the ‘Power to Change’ programme.

Power to Change is a programme developed in response to Tate's declaration of a climate emergency and climate, racial, social, and economic justice. However, they are key foundational questions that were considered in developing the programme.

These questions include:

• Starting from the place of responsibility and action in declaring climate emergency and asking ‘what can we do?’ and ‘what can art do?’
• ‘What is Tate’s unique to-do gift in climate emergency?’
• ‘Who needs to be in the room?’

Tate’s ‘Power to Change’ Partnerships

Tate developed a co-created/co-curated working method where there were partnerships across the board—from the Tate exchange team to the board of trustees to external partners.

Tate Climate Assembly: Tate

Tate has a Climate Assembly established within to share best practices across teams, galvanize all statistics on climate emergencies, and co-curate new ideas that would bring change across Tate through better policies, programs, and activities.

Tate Climate Assembly: Art and Artists

Tate also has a climate assembly with arts and artists which is geared towards a cohort of artists, creative practitioners, and thought leaders deliberating on the personal and collective creative ideas on how to handle climate emergency.

Tate Climate Assembly: Culture

This assembly is a gathering of key people and organizations from across the cultural sector, to consider the cross-sector and collaborative response to the climate emergency.

Reimagining Climate Action

This is a public curated programme of conversations around the emotional response to climate emergency and positive actions for the public to make in response to climate changes. The programme is led by experts across society such as politicians, legal experts, creative etc.

Several thought-provoking questions were raised at the end of the presentation. Accompanied by her colleague Bella Sereno, Environmental & Sustainability Manager at Tate, the two professionals answered to each question are well-detailed below:

• Climate emergency deserves extra-effort

Question (Participant): Do you put in as much effort in other courses as you do towards climate emergency?

Answer (Cara Courage): Yes, Tate does put in as much effort in other courses. Although Tate has over the years been criticized for jumping from one issue to another and this may be evident in the types of an exhibition put up by Tate over the years. However, Tate considers the issue of climate emergency to be worth the extra efforts that Tate may be putting in because climate emergency is a catastrophe that cuts across numerous sectors such as racial, societal, political and economic justice. In fact, climate emergency directly affects Tate’s various departments, its way of programming and interpretations etc. More so, climate emergency affects people in ways that haven’t been seen before.

• Explanation of Tate’s journey and climate being a central focus

Question (Moderator): Can you give us a brief explanation on the journey of Tate and how climate became one of the central focus?

Answer (Cara Courage): With the protests and urgency it brought to society generally, it was a refocusing and redoubling of Tate’s thinking around their responsibilities and how they can affect change; not only in reducing carbon footprints but also working together with other sectors thereby ensuring a wider coverage and conversation.

Answer (Bella): There has always been someone fully dedicated and responsible for the sustainability practices in Tate for about ten years. It isn’t something that has just popped up in the last two-three years, there has always been someone playing that key role and as time goes on, this trend evolved across the whole organization.

• Team size and number of people working on the course

Question (Moderator): How big is your team and how many people are working with you on this course?

Answer (Cara Courage): The Tate Exchange Team consists of eight (8) people but the entire ‘Power to Change’ team consists of numerous people drawn from different sectors such as the research departments, Tate’s collective producers, states and securities and lots more. It may interest you to know that in a recent meeting held among the ‘Power to Change’ team, there were about 40 people in the room and another 20–30 people who were unable to attend. This may give you a glimpse of how big the team actually is. Indeed it’s a really huge project which comprises of so many people which cuts across so many departments and involves so many experts.

• Description of the board of trustees’ specific roles

Question (Participant): Can you describe the specific roles of your board of trustees?

Answer (Cara Courage): The Board of Trustees ensures the team is working correctly towards the mission of the organization. They also question some of the actions of the team by raising questions such as what the team is doing, how they are doing it, and why they are doing it. Additionally, the Board of Trustees ensures the activities of Tate are in line with government rules and regulations.

Answer (Bella): Bella added that the team now reports quarterly to the Trustees in terms of figures that the team is achieving and aims to achieve.

• Identifying how to interact with different communities

Question (Participant): How do you identify the best ways to interact with the different communities involved in the topic?

Answer (Cara Courage): The Tate Exchange provides a platform for storytelling and an opportunity for people to express themselves through synergistic relationships. By interacting across different views, some big issues are discussed and action plans are developed. Cara also stated that trust and honesty have helped Tate exchange interact better with different communities over the years.

• Changing action plan for a climate emergency in a pandemic

Question (Moderator): How did you change your action plan towards climate emergency based on the Covid19 pandemic?

Answer (Cara Courage): Tate flipped their thinking and attention to audiences in need through the demographic lists available at Tate. Some of these audiences that were focused on include young people with mental health issues, older people in isolation and the local population. Tate devised a means to use resources available at the museum to assist the various communities hugely affected by the pandemic.

• Staying in touch with different communities during the lockdown

Question (Participant): How does Tate stay in touch with various communities during the lockdown?

Answer (Cara Courage): Tate speaks to their communities as much as they can and front line deliveries of basic community needs.

• Involvement of Tate in systemic climate change on a broader level

Question (Participant): Is Tate involved in systemic climate change on a more global level, national level or regional level?

Answer (Cara Courage): Tate does hold a position in climate emergency action both nationally and globally. Tate does have a horizontal influence across various sectors and vertically to government.

• Achieving a common mission collaborating with international museums

Question (Participant): Is it possible for Tate to collaborate with other international museums to achieve a common mission?

Answer (Cara Courage): Learning from each other is key especially in programmes like ‘Power to Change’. This sought of programme needs numerous experts from various sectors to make it work hence, Tate remains open to conversations and collaborations with other international museums or communities.

• Unveiling what’s more in museums and them bringing in more programmes

Question (Participant): I’m interested in how museums can show how they are more than just physical buildings. In the near future, what are the possibilities of bringing more programmes such as ‘Power to Change’ to communities rather than getting more people to the museum?

Answer (Cara Courage): Due to the current pandemic, the ability of Tate going out and visitors coming in would have to be accessed as time goes on. However, more online exhibitions which would incorporate communities would be adopted. This will eventually sustain the conversations and collaborations between the museum and the communities.

• Overcoming competitions in museums

Question (Participant): How should museums overcome competitions?

Answer (Cara Courage): Competition among museums is a redundant way of working. Competition can be overcome by embracing co-operation, engaging in long table discussion, and accepting when your idea is at the core of the discussion and sometimes when it becomes a secondary idea and the ideas of others become the core idea.

• Tate’s artwork on climate change

Question (Participant): Does Tate have any specific artwork on climate change?

Answer (Cara Courage): Tate doesn’t really have specific artwork on climate but Tate does have a collection of artworks that may not obviously be about climate but actually the story behind it, the time and place could be telling a massive story on climate change.

• How Tate found its working team

Question (Participant): How did you find your working team in Tate at the beginning considering how difficult it is?

Answer (Cara Courage): There has always been an entry-level interest for people joining Tate and this has made it easier for me to get a team of dedicated and committed personnel’s. Also, there has been leadership by example which sets the pace for others to follow and maintain sustainability over the years.

The answer to that question brought us to the end of yet another exciting and interesting session of We Are Museums online community meet-up. Remember, this is for everyone and we encourage you to join us next time.

We’d be looking forward to meeting with you as well. Until then, stay safe!

And of course, you can watch the recording of our meetup here: