Planet Placement

Key questions

  • Who do you most need to engage with on environmental change? Who makes key decisions? Who works for you? Who do you work with? Who are your activities and services for?
  • Who can take a lead on environmental communication and engagement, depending on which groups and people you most want to engage with?
  • How can you best share and communicate your environmental ambitions and good practice with key people and groups?
  • What opportunities you do you have to actively involve key people and groups in environmental change?
  • What are you already doing or what could you do to inform, inspire or support environmental change through your core activities?
  • What can you do to actively contribute to place-based, local, regional or sector environmental initiatives?

Be clear on who you want to engage with. Make your environmental initiatives relevant to what matters to those you want to engage with. Make a plan. Be honest, credible and inclusive. Look at what works well and what doesn’t, so you can adapt and improve over time.

Top Tips

  • Map out your key stakeholders. Identify the key people and groups you want to engage with and what matters to them.
  • If they are not already on board, engage with your trustees or your board to build support for environmental action.
  • Be clear on who is accountable, who is leading and who is supporting environmental action and create a shared understanding of how different people will work together and what their role is.
  • Involve your comms or marketing person or team in what you are doing so they can support environmental communication and engagement initiatives.
  • Share and communicate your own environmental commitment and good practice with the key people and groups you have identified e.g. employees, volunteers, audiences, members, community, peers, funders using the most appropriate communications depending on the people or groups in question.
  • Be transparent and specific about what you have achieved and what you want to achieve. Avoid greenwashing and use simple clear language.
  • Develop opportunities for environmental training and learning, starting with people within your organisation with specific environmental roles or responsibilities.
  • Consult with and work out how to actively involve key people or groups in developing, supporting or taking environmental action.
  • For exhibitors and screen heritage organisations, bring stories and activities which showcase the diversity of perspectives, solutions and voices in the climate, nature and justice crisis into your programming, screenings collections, exhibitions or events.
  • For sector support bodies, find out what specific environmental challenges the organisations or individuals you work are facing, and develop research, solutions or funding opportunities to address this.
  • For skills, training and education providers, building environmental content and resources into skills development, education and training activities.
  • Find out what existing sector or local environmental networks or initiatives you could get involved with to build collective action.

Planet Placement

Resources

A group of people in a circle listening to a woman speak
Julie's Bicycle - Communicating Sustainability
Guide
This guide provides advices on how to communicate environmental activities and achievements effectively to a diverse range of stakeholders and how to better engage with communications colleagues and develop external sustainability communications for your own unique situation.
Julie's Bicycle - Speaking Green, How to Share your Environmental Story
Video / Webinar
This webinar, delivered under Arts Council England’s Environmental Programme, looks at different ways of communicating your environmental projects and initiatives: from explaining why you’re ‘going green’ to colleagues and audiences, and how they can play a part, to transparently and creatively speaking about your environmental impacts and celebrating your achievements.
Young woman with a megaphone speaking in a crowd
Julie's Bicycle - Board Environmental Champions Programme - Champion's Guide
Guide
This guide, delivered under Arts Council England’s Environmental Programme, sets out what is involved in being a Board Environmental Champion and putting the role into practice. It includes an overview of relevant governance issues, practical examples and top tips, as well as signposting to further resources or support.
two persons silhouette standing near wall
Heard - Climate Stories That Work: Turning Awareness into Action
Guide
Heard is a charity working with people and the media to inspire content and communication that changes hearts and minds. Its Climate Stories That Work programme provides a set of guides on effective climate change story-telling to help media outlets, production teams, content platforms or individuals and groups with an audience or following e.g. Six Ways to Change Hearts and Minds about Climate Change.
white and green wall tiles
albert - The Impact of Climate Content
Report
This report, supported by Screen Industries Growth Network at the University of York and Research England, and commissioned by BAFTA albert explores the existing evidence on the impact of climate content on audiences from a ‘pro-environmental behavioural’ perspective; what the audience demand for climate content is and what audiences want it to achieve and; the audience response to different types of climate content.
Audience indoors with two people on stage and screen behind them
BFI Film Audience Network - Green Hour - UK Green Film Network
Video / Webinar
This webinar, led by the UK Green Film Network, explores examples of green programming and successes, challenges and opportunities encountered along the way with contributions from Patrick Hort (Owner, Mammoth – A Climate Action Cinema), Claire Horrocks (Film Programmer, Exeter Phoenix), Felicity Beckett (Head of Green Steering Group, Picturehouse) and Carol Rennie (Co-Director, Keswick Alhambra Cinema).
a lush green forest filled with lots of trees
UK Green Film Network
Network
The UK Green Film Network started in 2023 and is a collaboration between British cinemas founded around the common goal of sharing ideas, learnings and advice on green film curation. It is funded by ticketing software provider Savoy Systems Ltd as part of its commitment to people and planet.
group of people staring at monitor inside room
Take One Action - Film Directory
Website
Take One Action provides a director of 100s of films, to browse, watch or share, on a wide range of key social and environmental justice issues, from women’s empowerment to climate change, via access to education or food sustainability.
Turned on Projector
Cinema for All - Climate Action Focus Group
Network
Cinema for All’s Climate Action Focus is exploring ways that community cinemas can take positive environmental action both on a practical level and through screenings and programming.

Planet Placement

Examples

Hands holding a small plant against some soil
UK Green Film Festival
Image of green rolling hills
WOW Wales One World Film Festival
Students on set shooting a film in a blue hue
Screen Education Edinburgh - Edinburgh 2050
The back of a mans head, he has his arms clasped behind his afro as he reclines in a cinema seat in front of a screen
The Birks Cinema - Abderfeldy - Climate Movie Night
An extended reality figure made up of blue lights, arms outstretched
Home Planet - XR Stories
Image of a fox sitting in the middle of a tree lined path
Wildscreen Festival
Image of a tree lined street in autumn
Nature in your Neighbourhoods
Girl Sitting on the Tree Branch
Yorkshire Film archive - Nature Matters programme
a book shelf filled with lots of books
Suffolk Libraries' case study on empowering staff to take a lead on climate action
Yellow Concrete Cathedral Under Sky
Depot Lewes Climate Action! Festival
Person Cycling Near Wind Turbine
HOME Manchester Sustainability Programming
Snapshot of Fehinti Balogun
Complicité and Doc Society micro-bursaries for community screenings of the climate justice film Can I Live?
Green mentoring session from BFI
BFI Film Audience Network - Green Exhibitors Mentoring Programme
Photographer taking photo on camera
Film London and Creative Zero Fuel Project
Double Exposure of Woman and Leaves
Frome International Climate Film Festival
Retro TV on river shore near forest
Mammoth - A Climate Action Cinema
A Tangled Negative Filmstrip
Green Film Festival @UEA
black studio camera on top of brown bar
Take One Action!
Cinema For All Climate Action Focus Group: Stroud Film Society
Mosaic image including a Gorilla behind bars, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking at a rally with a microphone, a person walking through green fields, a person sleeping, a person out to sea, a person wearing a big protective suit with volcanic lava in the background and another person at a rally
Film Hub Wales - A Biodiverse Big Screen Catalogue
Image Credits —
Julie's Bicycle