Last December you donated just over £7,000 to our first ever Big Give Campaign, providing us much needed funding to develop our Climate Action work. We couldn’t be more grateful.

Ever since we joined forces with other arts and culture organisations across Bristol to declare a Climate Emergency in 2019, we’ve been working hard behind the scenes to ensure our Climate Action work is part of everything we do. Our Environment Group, made up of representatives from across the organisation, lead this work.

Here are some details of how this work has unfolded over the last 12 months with the funding received: 

We created a year-round programme linking our creative technology and cultural cinema programme to engage audiences in environmental sustainability

Highlights have included:

• 55 screenings of Wilding which 2,014 of you came to see
• We presented the More Than Human Sunday programme, curated by Adam Laity in June with films including Stalker, A Year in a Field, Six Inches of Soil and The Thin Red Line.
• We sold out our first ever Mushroom Growing Workshop following the screening of Fungi: The Web of Life, in which Dr. Merlin Sheldrake and Björk explored the mysterious world of fungi. Following the success of the workshop, we're excited to hold more in the future.
• We dedicated June’s First Friday event to residents from The Pervasive Media Studio to share their work centred around the theme of Nature.
• We presented an amazing Lunchtime Talk from Pervasive Media Studio resident and artist, Sylvia Rimat and collaborating gardener Charli Clark about their free wildflower installation and audio experience ‘Broad Meadow’ which you can still watch here.

We launched Watershed Wild and Generous – an action research project with artists and activists to explore what audiences want from a cultural centre in a climate crisis

Back in March, our CEO Clare Reddington wrote this article as a result of the work we’d been doing thinking about the future and legacy of our building.

Since then, we’ve been learning more about regenerative design and held a workshop bringing together 23 experts and artists/creative technologists from our community to inspire and support our plans. We’ve also been working with local partners, including Bristol Nature & Climate Partnership and the Hotwells & Cliftonwood Community Association, to ensure our plans are aligned with other plans for the city centre.

There is much more to come so keep an eye on our social channels for ways you can get involved. 

We have explored how we can use our resources and assets to improve biodiversity in our immediate vicinity and showcase environmental innovation

We’ve begun to plan out how we can improve biodiversity in our area. We’ve created a subgroup of our Environment Group specifically looking at nature and what we could do to improve biodiversity. 

We've been working on fundraising to support the retrofit of our listed building, prioritising the upgrade of our heating system to reduce scope 1 emissions, and the installation of new windows to significantly reduce scope 2 emissions

We very quickly realised that the work we need to do to retrofit our building is complex and that we need more information to take this forward. We have been applying for funding which will enable us to do a feasibility study for the conservation, regenerative design and retrofit of our building. This work will hopefully take place in 2025 and the funding will enable us to really focus on a variety of possibilities, including; finding out if we can join the Bristol District Heating Network, undertaking a full condition survey of the building, and creating a plan for the building work that will need to be done to make us a more comfortable space to be in and as sustainable as possible. Watch this space…

We are continuing to share our learning – our successes and failures – with others, working together towards a just and equitable future.

We’ve taken time to refresh our Climate Action Website page and created a Climate Action identity which will make it easier to find the events, screenings and debates you can come along to if you are interested in knowing more about how you can make changes to help the planet. We’ve also shared our learning from different pieces of work – including our Carbon Accounting and the outcomes of our ‘Alternative Technologies: A Just Transition’ project.

We know that many of you are really interested in finding out more about Climate Justice, and we will continue to programme events, screenings and debates that help you understand more about it and engage in your own action. 

Our main learning from this year? We can’t do Climate Action work alone – it needs the collective whole.

So, if you’d like to partner with us to build a better world for everyone, please get in touch by emailing: climateaction@watershed.co.uk.

This year we will be taking part in the Big Give Campaign again, this time raising money for Make Shift, which opens up creative careers for all young people in Bristol.

From Tue 3 - Tue 10 Dec the first £5,000 donated to the campaign will be doubled – find out more and make your donation during the campaign week at https://wshd.to/biggive.

We look forward to updating you here again in 12 months time to see what a massive difference your support can make.