- Posted on October 28th, 2025
Barnsley Libraries – Turning Climate Anxiety into Action with Young Voices
The Creative Climate Accelerator is a training programme by JB and Arts Council England, designed to empower emerging climate leaders from diverse backgrounds within the cultural sector. Participants develop action plans for creative climate projects, focusing on themes like climate justice and biodiversity.
Barnsley Libraries took part in this programme last year, as detailed in the following case study, outlining how they collaborated with young people to tackle climate anxiety through film and embed sustainability across their services and partnerships.
After declaring a climate emergency in 2019, Barnsley Council developed ‘Zero 40’ and ‘Sustainable Barnsley’ goals, including empowering communities to make positive changes locally. As part of our work as an NPO we have been linking up with wider council strategies such as these where they align with our investment principles. Young people are typically an audience that we struggle to engage with in Libraries so we also wanted to make sure this project had co-production at its heart so the participants would have ownership on the outcome and library spaces. On various webinars and networking events we’d been to, there had been a lot of talk about the rise in climate anxiety in young people so we decided this was something we would tackle in Barnsley.
Since the Creative Climate Accelerator Programme, we’ve been working on commissioning an artist for Green Libraries Week 2024. We worked with a panel of young people from Barnsley Youth Council to write a brief, score and select a project of their interest for Green Libraries Week. They chose to create a film which opened up new experiences to the young people involved and new creative ways to explore their climate anxieties as well as educate their peers on what they could do to combat these issues.
The film, Change is Coming, was co-produced by Barnsley Libraries, Fly Girl Films and young people in Barnsley for Green Libraries Week 2024, tackling climate anxiety and turning it into positive climate action. The project culminated in a premiere of Change is Coming on the big screen at the Parkway Cinema. This included a Q and A with participants where they shared their thoughts on the filming process and how this had eased their climate anxieties.
Audience members at the launch were really impressed with the quality of the film and how eloquently the young people were able to talk about the changes they now wanted to see in Barnsley when questioned. One audience member said: ‘Loved the Q&A with the young people involved. The film was very engaging and there was a sense of pride and accomplishment from the young people involved.’
It was really great to have the opportunity to take everything we learnt on the programme and use it to inform next year’s NPO (National Portfolio Organisation) programme and really embed sustainability from the beginning of the planning phase.
We’ve joined up with The Barnsley Civic to create Sustainability Socials to connect creative organisations in Barnsley to share best practice.
As well as commissioning work for Green Libraries Week, we’ve also developed a Green Terms of Reference, moved to more sustainable marketing with Cardboard display banners and have made an effort to engage with sustainable social enterprises where possible. The rest of my team has been really supportive and we’re now embedding a greener outlook across the whole project.
We’re building on the success of the Green Libraries Week commission with another, larger commission next year.
We’ve had lots of applications for the Green Libraries Week commission this year and are in the process of scoring and selecting which will be taken forward with a panel based in Darfield Library, which is where the commission will be centred this year. We’re looking for a project that will connect the local communities in Darfield to nature and build in the recent development of the Library garden.
Header image: Change is Coming on the big screen at the Parkway Cinema, Credit: Barnsley Libraries.