Museums and the Sustainable Development Goals

Museums and the Sustainable Development Goals
How can museums help achieve the SDGs and use them as practical tools?
What’s the situation?
Sustainable development – properly understood – is an inclusive process of planning, action and transformation. Agenda 2030 and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are set out as an invitation for all parts of society and all sectors to take part in inclusive sustainable development, to address the following five over-arching challenges and high-level ambitions, called the ‘5 Ps’:
People: to end poverty and hunger, in all their forms and dimensions, and to ensure that all human beings can fulfil their potential in dignity and equality and in a healthy environment.
Planet: to protect the planet from degradation, including through sustainable consumption and production, sustainably managing its natural resources and taking urgent action on climate change, so that it can support the needs of the present and future generations.
Prosperity: to ensure that all human beings can enjoy prosperous and fulfilling lives and that economic, social, and technological progress occurs in harmony with nature.
Peace: to foster peaceful, just and inclusive societies which are free from fear and violence. There can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development.
Partnership: to mobilise the means required to implement the 2030 Agenda through a revitalised Global Partnership for Sustainable Development, based on a spirit of strengthened global solidarity, focused in particular on the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable and with the participation of all countries, all stakeholders and all people.
While cultural institutions can play many roles in the SDGs, many are unsure what to do. A massive amount of potential remains to be unlocked. The SDGs can also help museums contribute effectively to society, and have their contributions recognised. Museums need the SDGs, and the SDGs need museums.

How I work with sustainable development and the SDGs:
Sustainable development is much more than using resources carefully, or operational considerations. That is part of it, but far from all of it. Sustainable development is also much more than simply delivering governments’ or authorities’ agendas through cultural institutions, as that is not really a cultural activity, but public administration. More fundamentally, people have a wide variety of rights to expect and contribute to a better future, and to determine what better even means. Cultural institutions are at the point between people as individuals, and communities, and authorities’ responsibilities. They can provide space and resources for all of these to understand, debate, deliberate, plan, communicate and deliver sustainable development action.
I work with goal-based approaches, using the SDG targets as the practical level to set goals, find tools and opportunities, plan and deliver action, and to tell the story to a variety of stakeholders. This might be done in relation to teams of people, organisations, networks, partnerships, at local, regional, national or international levels. I have worked with all of these.
In Museums and the Sustainable Development Goals (2019) I outline a set of seven key activities that museums (and other cultural institutions) can use as a framework to apply the SDGs to museums, and museums to sustainable development:
- Protect, safeguard and develop cultural and natural heritage, in museums and more generally
- Support Education for Sustainable Devleopment
- Enable cultural participation for all, in museum activities and in wider sustainable development
- Support sustainable tourism
- Enable research in support of the SDGs
- Direct internal leadership, management and operations to support the SDGs
- Direct external leadership, collaboration and partnerships towards the SDGs
These seven key activities can be readily aligned with a small number of SDG targets to plan, deliver, monitor and communicate activity.
This framework is further explored in Mainstreaming the SDGs (2021), which helps to embed sustainable development across museums’ activities, and to set high-level goals, as well as communicate activity in terms of the SDGs.
‘Understanding the Sustainable Development Goals and Targets’ (2022) is a guide for museums, libraries and other cultural institutions. It explains the main aims and core concepts for each SDG, and the meaning of the SDG targets. It makes suggestions on how museums, libraries and other cultural institutions can contribute to these goals and targets.
‘Localising the SDGs Through Museums and Libraries’ (2023) was written to support a five-country collaboration project led by UNESCO Latvia, to help turn the SDGs into a planned programme of activity. The guide sets out a step-by-step process, with monitoring guidance, suggested activities, and tools to help identify priorities for action. It gives you a template 12-month timetable, to go from a standing start to communicating your actions.

“Sustainable development is about supporting human freedom, and protecting and restoring nature”
Sustainable development and the SDGs are a really big part of my Curating Tomorrow work. I work as a consultant on ICCROM’s Our Collections Matter programme (since 2020), to embed the SDGs and SDG practices into collections-based institutions, and develop and deliver development programmes for organisations.
What this means for you:
Whether you are in a tiny, one-person museum, or a massive international network, sustainable development and the SDGs are a powerful tool and approach to support your work. I write an open-access series of practical guides to help museums and similar organisations, and their partners, and everyone who works in them, to apply sustainable development and the SDGs to museums, and museums to the SDGs.
How Curating Tomorrow can support you:
Curating Tomorrow can help you understand and apply sustainable development approaches, and the sustainable development goals and their targets to your work, organisation, town, region, country or internationally.
- Consultancy on rights-based approaches to sustainable development and the SDGs, and how they connect with human rights and environmental agreements and programmes.
- Speaking at conferences
- Online and/or in-person workshops for staff or groups of staff
- Advice on applying the SDGs to setting goals, making plans, monitoring and communicating activity.
- Contributing to public-facing activities (exhibitions, events, consultations) on sustainable development, or aiming to achieve sustainable development outcomes.