Sara Crofts to speak on climate action

Historic Environment Scotland is organising a public debate on climate action

21 Feb 2020

Icon's Chief Executive, Sara Crofts will be speaking at “Now we have your attention: let's talk climate action” - a public debate being put on by Historic Environment Scotland on 15 March at Edinburgh Castle.

The program will explore how we can inspire people to take climate action, with arts, culture and heritage perspectives as part of the conversation. 

The event will feature one of the world’s leading climate change communicators, Professor Katharine Hayhoe, who will share her experience of finding effective ways of communicating the climate crisis. Professor Hayhoe will then be joined by a panel of invited experts who will each share their experience of talking about climate change and how they have used their varying areas of expertise to reach new audiences, changing hearts and minds along the way.

Panellist include Sara Crofts, Chief Executive of Icon, Council Member of Europa Nostra and a member of the international steering committee of the Climate Heritage Network; Dr Ewan Hyslop, Head of Technical Research and Science at Historic Environment Scotland and Co-Chair of the Climate Heritage Network; and comedian and environmental economist Matt Winning.

In late 2019 the CHN released its initial plan to help mobilise arts, culture and heritage for climate action at a side event held in Madrid at COP25, the 2019 UN Climate Summit. Dubbed the Madrid-to-Glasgow Arts, Culture and Heritage Climate Action Plan, its release kicks off a year of culture-based climate action that will culminate at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland. 

The first of the eight projects included in the Plan aims to promote climate action by better communicating  the connection with cultural heritage. It will be led by none other than Icon’s Sara Crofts with support from a coalition of organisations including the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Built Environment Scotland Forum (BEFS).

Twinning Sara and CHN Co-Chair Ewan Hyslop with Katharine Hayhoe is a stroke of genius that gives the CHN’s communications planning a huge boost, aside from all the other benefits of this valuable programme. Hayhoe is not only an accomplished atmospheric scientist who studies climate but a remarkable communicator who has received the American Geophysical Union’s climate communication prize, the Stephen Schneider Climate Communication award, and been named to a number of lists including Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Thinkers, and FORTUNE magazine’s World’s Greatest Leaders.