Museums for Better Futures Report

Cherry blossoms in Tokyo
Museums for Better Futures (report)
Taking action for sustainable development
What’s the situation?
The UK and many countries, including the UK, have not historically faced major disasters. This means they do not have a ‘culture of preparedness’ or a ‘culture of resilience’. Many museums are also at risk, and could benefit from understanding and applying risk-informed approaches to build their resilience in an ongoing way.
What I did, what I found out:
- During 2020-23, I developed a framework for museums to embed and integrate sustainable development, human rights, nature conservation, and Disaster Risk Reduction, supported by a Churchill Fellowship.
- I attended policy-shaping summits, namely Stockholm+50, and a UN Climate Change summit in Bonn.
- I spent a month in Japan in 2023, visiting Sendai, Fukushima, Tokyo, Kobe, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Shimabara and Unzen. I visited places affected by tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes, atomic bombings, war, and how people, communities and nature had been impacted by these threats. I met with researchers and policy makers, museums, and took part in the Bosai Forum (a major international meeting on DRR).
“Remember. Learn. Prepare. Act”



I developed a set of ten recommendations for museum workers, museums, policy makers and partners:
- Connect museum work with sustainable development agendas and approaches concretely.
- Recognise that it is not enough to ‘support’ sustainability or sustainable development: there needs to be clear goals, plans, and mechanisms for reporting and communication for accountability.
- Think global and act local.
- Use the outcomes of Stockholm+50, the Glasgow Work Programme on Action for Climate Empowerment, and Japanese experiences with managing disaster risk as templates and practical tools to support rights-based environmental action and DRR.
- Restoring nature is good for people, communities and for nature.
- Culture and heritage can be tools for environmental action and reduce disaster risk, but they can also be barriers to action.
- Museums can be information centres and platforms for sustainable development, environmental information and Disaster Risk Reduction.
- Make sure that activity is rights-based.
- Make sure that museum activities are appropriate and sensitive to the needs of people, communities and contexts, especially in post-disaster or high-risk situations.
- While Disaster Risk Reduction is often thought of as needing to balance the needs to forget and to remember, it is also important to create and to imagine, to develop alternative options for desired future states.
What this means for you:
You can make use of these ten recommendations, to bring a number of different strands of sustainable development together. You can find out more in the report Museums for Better Futures, which sets out the main findings and makes recommendations for individual museum workers, museums, and funders and policy makers.
You can also read more on the Churchill Fellowship website, on ‘Sustainable Development and Museums’, ‘COP26, Climate Action and Cultural Institutions’, and ‘Building a Culture of Peace in Harmony With Nature, One Museum at a Time’.
How Curating Tomorrow can support you:
Curating Tomorrow can help you understand and apply these recommendations to your own work, organisation or network, through:
- Speaking at conferences
- Online and/or in-person workshops for staff or groups of staff
- Advice
- Strategy, policy and plan development
- Contributing to public-facing activities (exhibitions, events, consultations) on sustainable development and Disaster Risk Reduction