A Community-centred Approach to the Climate Emergency

If we see the historic environment as alive and ever-changing, how does that shift our capacity to engage with it? And now can policy and management of the historic environment adapt to community needs, being flexible and resilient in the face of climate change, loss and the ever-changing environment?  

These are the questions Dr Audrey Scardina asked during her research project, entitled, 'The Historic Environment as an agent of change in the climate emergency: a community-centred approach' which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation. 

Audrey, who was based on HES’s Climate Change team, was one of eight researchers who was awarded funding through the pilot round of the Early Career Research Fellowships in Cultural and Heritage Institutions scheme. 

This scheme supports post-doctoral researchers taking up positions within Independent Research Organisations (IROs) like HES. This project had three main objectives: 

Objective 1

Reframe thinking surrounding the historic environment, climate change and community engagement. This will be achieved through fieldwork at Historic Environment Scotland’s Properties in Care. 

Objective 2

Create a series of agile, flexible outputs designed to support the evolving management policy and practice for both HES’s Properties in Care and the wider heritage sector. 

Objective 3

Generate meaningful impact through furthering discourse within HES, in the heritage sector and in academic circles, and through fostering active relationships between communities and their historic environment.  

The Fellowship has supported strands of various strategies. For example:  

• The delivery of Priority 2 of Our Past Our Future – Empowering resilient and inclusive communities and places. 

• Our Climate Action Strategy 2025-30, specifically the theme of Community Engagement and Climate Resilience.  

• Our Equality Outcomes 2025-29, through the co-design of consultation workshops.

Over the course of 2024-5, Audrey ran a number of successful co-creation workshops and events.

The pilot sessions were held in May 2024 at Dundonald Castle and set up with the Friends of Dundonald Castle and support from colleagues from the Climate Change Policy team. 

Two workshops, at Stirling Castle and Glasgow Cathedral in August and September, were run in collaboration with the Equalities Team. These workshops focused on the intersection between the climate crisis and the experiences of marginalised communities, which were held in August and September 2024.  

A trip to the Isle of Lewis to talk to key stakeholders in community development in September 2024. 

An internal workshop took place at the HES Green Champions Conference 2024. The HES Green Champions are an internal network that advocate for climate action and sustainability within their own teams across the organisation. A second internal workshop was held with the HES Community Connections Steering Group in Spring 2025.  

Audrey will be running of a series of events at HES Properties in Care as part of her work. At each selected property there will be:  

• A co-creation workshop to gather community perspectives on climate change, the historic environment and loss. These in-person workshops will run over a couple of hours with a small number of participants. They will result in an output that summarises key themes and takeaways from the workshop.  

• A collaborative community consultation, where participants of the co-creation workshop and the wider community around the property will have the opportunity to provide feedback on the output created from the co-creation workshops. 

• An online consultation, open to an even larger audience, which will provide a final opportunity for community feedback.  

The project output will be published upon the conclusion of the project.