Inside the Archive #47: How can archives become more sustainable?

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending an environmental sustainability workshop run by Julie’s Bicycle, the nonprofit mobilising arts and culture to take action on the climate crisis. The session brought together representatives from archives across the UK including the June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive, the Yorkshire and North East Film Archives, and London’s Screen Archive, to explore how we can adapt and build resilience in response to climate change.

As archivists, we’re already stewards of memory, preserving materials for future generations. The workshop reminded me how naturally this philosophy extends to environmental stewardship: if our mission is to protect cultural heritage for tomorrow, then we must also safeguard the world that sustains it.

The workshop focused on climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience – examples being: reducing emissions and enhancing carbon sinks, while building capacity to respond to climate shocks and transform systems. We explored the practical side of this – how adaptation now can save money in the long run, and how institutions can integrate resilience into their everyday operations.

One striking phrase from the presentation stayed with me: tolerance builds slowly. Climate change is happening incrementally and, because of that, we risk accepting its effects as normal. Recognising that it’s not normal is the first step towards real change.

We also discussed the risks of extreme weather that face archives – collection damage, building vulnerabilities, funding pressures, community impacts, and wider socio-economic disruption. Each organisation was encouraged to map potential climate changes in its area using the Local Climate Adaptation Tool, identify local risks, and consider how to raise awareness within their teams.

A highlight of the day was hearing how other archives are responding creatively to climate change:

• Bangor University Archives installed UV and heat-proof window film, blackout blinds and blowerproof paint to make their space airtight – allowing them to shut off their HVAC system entirely back in 2011.
• York Libraries and Archives relocated their strongroom to the top floor of a high point in the city to reduce flood risk.
• Conway Archive Service built an underground passive storage room with no HVAC system at all, achieving major energy savings despite the challenges of a new concrete structure.

It was also encouraging to reflect on the BFI’s ongoing sustainability work, which was shared by Arunee Sarasetsiri (Industry Environmental Sustainability Partner) and Keir Oldfield-Lewis (Head of Environmental Sustainability). The BFI has established a Climate Risks Working Group to assess and mitigate the impacts of climate change across our sites.

We’re developing a routemap to net zero in partnership with consultancy 3ADAPT, working with teams across the organisation to make it both practical and ambitious. Our heat decarbonisation plan is already underway, including a solar array at the Master Film Store in Gaydon and a heat pump system at the Conservation Centre in Berkhamsted.

During the tour of the archive in the afternoon, Duncan Mckeich (Head of Facilities) discussed the roof recladding project at Berkhamsted – a safety upgrade that will also boost energy efficiency. We’ve also started mapping climate risks across our archive and office sites, bringing together sustainability, facilities, and health and safety teams to develop an action plan as the next step.

Alongside this, the BFI is working on a biodiversity strategy for its archive sites, with baseline work completed and a plan for biodiversity net gain now in progress. These initiatives show how environmental responsibility is becoming embedded within our organisational fabric – not just as policy, but as everyday practice. Amazing!

The workshop ended with a challenge: to connect what we’d learned to our own work and local contexts. I left the workshop with a sense of both urgency and optimism. Climate action and archival care are, at heart, the same kind of work – both grounded in foresight, responsibility, and a belief in continuity. The BFI’s sustainability projects, alongside the creative experiments happening across the archive sector, show that change is possible when we share knowledge and act collectively.

– Caitlin Connelly, Digital Curatorial Archivist (Our Screen Heritage)

As part of the Our Screen Heritage project (supported by the BFI Screen Heritage Fund, awarding National Lottery funding), the BFI National Archive has acquired hundreds of online moving image works (think YouTube and TikTok rather than Netflix or Amazon, which the Archive collects via a different arrangement).

Alongside this, we’ve been working on research project to explore and design a digital acquisitions service – a streamlined way to collect this type of material going forward.

Collecting online moving image is not a new activity for the BFI National Archive – in 2020, for example, we launched our Britain on Lockdown collecting initiative – but the objectives of Our Screen Heritage has marked a period of focused activity in this area. Technically, our past endeavours have involved a variety of file transfer tools, and sometimes even in-person exchanges of hard drives. However, as times change (and with the vast scale of the online universe), our collecting methods need to evolve too.

To help us realise this, we’ve been working with GAIN (formally known as Bunnyfoot), a service design agency. They helped us to map our existing processes and consider the design of our future service. Through user research, we interviewed a number of user groups including donors and BFI staff to better understand how this material is currently entering our collections and the ways in which these processes could be improved. We’ve hosted co-design workshops to develop initial prototypes and tested these with prospective donors to validate and challenge our ideas.

The testing continues but, as our understanding of the problem improves, so does our thinking about how to shape an effective solution.

We look forward to sharing more news about the project as our plans for the service come to fruition.

– Samir Lee, Programme Delivery Manager

The Inside the Archive blog is supported by the BFI Screen Heritage Fund, awarding National Lottery funding.