A Framework for Environmental Justice is a report that reflects two years of conversations held under the banner of the Black Atlantic Innovation Network (BAIN) - co-convened by Radical Ecology and UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre.
Through BAIN, we have sought to bring practitioners together from across some of the UK’s leading cultural and heritage organisations and to facilitate a shared understanding across these sectors about how, through programmatic work as well as through attention to the operational culture of our public institutions, we can begin to confront the greatest challenges of the 21st century.
Within and across organisations, we’ve explored developments taking place in siloed strands of work including equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), sustainability and decolonisation, identifying common objectives and challenges as well as best practices that shine through across the UK cultural and heritage sectors. We have further considered that when seen not as separate siloes but as a unified whole, this work begins to reveal what we call here a framework for environmental justice - a joined up strategy for facing the future from the heart of our cultural institutions. The framework advances a practicable model that can be adopted and scaled by diverse organisations, including charities, arts venues, public bodies, festivals and local authorities.
Our report takes stock of the present moment, drawing lessons from organisational journeys in-process that can support growth and change for the future.
BAIN has been funded by UCL Innovation & Enterprise through UCL’s Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation, and by Open Society Foundations, Lankelly Chase and Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.