
If we see the historic environment as alive and ever-changing, how does that shift our capacity to engage with it? And how 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 is asking as part of her two-year project at Historic Environment Scotland, which is titled 'The Historic Environment as an agent of change in the climate emergency: a community centred approach', and is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation.
Audrey, who is based in HES’s Climate Change Policy team, is one of eight researchers that have been awarded funding through the pilot for Early Career Research Fellowships in Cultural and Heritage Institutions scheme.

Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Fellow Dr Audrey Scardina. Photo V&A.
This scheme is supporting post-doctoral researchers taking up positions within Independent Research Organisations (IROs) like HES. This project has 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
From a sector-wide perspective, this project will support the delivery of Priority 2 of Our Past Our Future – Empowering resilient and inclusive communities and places

The first round of co-creation workshops taking place at Dundonald Castle, held in collaboration with the Friends of Dundonald Castle and the Historic Environment Scotland Climate Change Policy team.
These objectives will also support HES’s Climate Action Plan (CAP) 2020-25. The Climate Impact and Adaptation strand of the CAP states that HES will ‘undertake and support ground-breaking research to better increase knowledge and understanding of the physical, social and economic impacts of climate change on the historic environment’ and will ‘increase understanding of how to proactively manage the loss of heritage assets, including maximising benefits through engagement with communities’. It will also help to inform the delivery of HES's upcoming Equality Outcomes.
Over the course of 2024, Audrey ran a number of successful of co-creation workshops:
- The pilot sessions were held in May 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, who are in the process of writing the 2025-2030 Equalities Outcomes for HES. These workshops focused on the intersection between the climate crisis and the experiences of marginalised communities.
- A final internal workshop took place this year at the HES Green Champions Conference. The HES Green Champions are an internal network that advocate for climate action and sustainability within their own teams across the organisation.
She is currently in the process of planning and scheduling further co-creation workshops for Spring 2025, which, when scheduled, will be listed at the foot of this page.
