Museums and Climate: JB at Tate Lates

At a recent Tate Lates Event JB’s Lucy Latham gave a talk on the role of Museums in the age of the Anthropocene, exploring how one of the key functions of our museums – to provide a space to reflect, contemplate and critique – must be galvanised in the climate crisis. Museums’ hugely rich and varied resources and collections from the near or distant past helps both orient us in our present, and provides strategies for navigating our future; most pressingly, our climate futures. A wider view of history and civilisation’s many transitions, evolutions, innovations and indeed, catastrophes, provide key lessons and tools in our urgent climate journey. Museums are also increasingly adopting ‘participatory’ or ‘co-creative‘ models of development, which seek to involve visitors, community and interest groups in discussion and social action – so their role as we move society post-carbon, test new ways of living and build resilience must be front and centre. You can hear more from a range of experts in the field talk about the hugely important role of cultural heritage in our climate futures in our Green Heritage Futures Podcast.