Sustainability Charter

In recognition of the shared work of building a more sustainable and equitable community Art Jameel has taken action to reduce its emissions and waste footprints, with much more to come.

Art Jameel is committed to monitoring, understanding, and reducing its waste and emissions while adopting a climate positive approach in its operations. From the resources used through operating and maintaining our buildings and the Jaddaf Waterfront Sculpture Park, to how exhibitions are curated and put together, to how we care for artworks and the types of programming we do- we’ve put the climate emergency at the heart of our global operations.

What we have done so far:

Operations and Green House Gas emissions:

We conducted two Green House Gas Audits for the Jameel Arts Centre for years 2020 and 2021 to understand our baseline emissions. This helped us to better understand where we were able to immediately make a positive impact in our emissions and waste footprints, and where longer-term planning and structural changes needed to happen.

Our findings and subsequent steps taken to reduce our emissions are highlighted at the end of the document.

Programming:

We understand that that environmental challenges cannot be separated from social, cultural, and structural ones. We believe in the role culture plays in helping us understand the climate emergency, interrogate our role within it, and envision a more sustainable and equitable way forward.  Here are some of the ways we have engaged audiences through the years around these key issues:

• • Exhibitions:
    • An Ocean in Every Drop: A group exhibition looking at our relationship to water through its production of culture and ritual.
    • Staple: What’s on your plate: A group exhibition looking at the politics of food and agriculture from a regional perspective
    • Artist’s Garden Commissions: A biennial garden commission
    • Crude: Our inaugural exhibition looking at the history of Petromodernity from a local and regional perspective
  • Public Programmes
    • Material Matters: A symposium exploring new ways that architects and designers are working with sustainable and local materials
    • Shifting Earth: A biennial symposium related to our Artist’s Garden commission exploring plants and botany from a global perspective.
    • Edible Responses: A symposium looking at the politics of farming and agriculture
    • Digital earth: A symposium looking at how technology influences our understanding of and relation to the world.
  • Community Engagement:
    • Down to Earth – An annual community festival platforming local green business and engaging the community in activities and conversations around sustainable lifestyles
    • Jaddaf Community Garden: A community led vegetable garden
    • My winter garden: A long term course on planting and harvesting for the local community.

Research: 

• We are working with museums and galleries across the global south to re-think climate control parameters in relation to artworks on display
• Our library holds publicly accessible research in relation to all our programmes, including research generated around our Artist’s Garden Commissions that engages with local biodiversity and traditional botanical knowledge.
  

Architecture and Gardens: 

Jameel Arts Centre has seven gardens located across the centre and between gallery spaces. These have been designed by landscape architect Anouk Vogel and consist only of plans that are native to desert climates, reducing the need for water and maintenance.

Reduction of Scope 2 Emissions by:

• Water
  • Adopting water saving practices in the Jaddaf Waterfront Sculpture Park such as timed and weather responsive watering schedules
  • Installing water filtration systems across the building to eliminate the purchase of plastic water bottles and gallons
• Electricity and Gas
  • Installing LED lighting across the building, controlled by motion sensors to reduce active time
  • Setting efficient schedules for climate control both in our offices and in our gallery spaces
  • Increasing remote working days from 1 day to 2 days helping to reduce staff travel
  • Installed more efficient UV filters on lobby widows to reduce heat
• Waste
  • Installing waste segregation bins for the public as well as in our back of house areas
  • Ensuring waste collected is recycled and repurposed by a specialist company

Reduction of Scope 3 Emissions by:

• Prioritising local production over import where possible
• Prioritising the consolidation of artworks shipments
• Prioritising sea-freight over airfreight where possible
• Lengthening the duration of our exhibitions from 4 months to 6 months
• Re-using exhibition build for concurrent exhibitions
• Re-using or donating exhibition build materials to divert from landfill
• Recycling exhibition waste where possible to divert from landfill
• Employing virtual meeting tools to plan and produce exhibitions to reduce travel where possible

What we are working on:

2023-2025: Structural changes and policy leadership

• Working with museum and gallery colleagues to implement more sustainable collection care practices
• Working with museum and gallery colleagues to revise climate control guidelines while keeping conversation guidelines in mind
• Commit to purchasing energy from renewable resource where possible and as soon as possible in the countries we operate in
• Commit to installing solar panels and or other renewable energy generators on site at the Jameel Arts Centre