Looking back at the impact of Scotland's Climate Festival

At the beginning of November, when the UN COP26 Climate Conference was being hosted in Scotland, we launched Scotland’s Climate Festival with support from the Scottish Government.

The Festival was built around two strands, a national event series and a programme of support for communities to organise and promote local climate events focused on growing, active travel, recycling through festivals, film screenings, guided walks and workshops.

Now almost a year on, during #ScotClimateWeek, we are delighted to publish a report that highlights the successes of the Festival and learning from our work with communities across Scotland.

In summary as part of this programme of activity, we:

• Supported 62 community festivals in 17 Scottish local authority areas;
• Distributed almost £15,000 of seed funds to 37 groups to create local climate events;
• Worked with 14 national partners to collaborate on resources and ideas for local communities;
• Engaged with groups that had never hosted a climate event – 45% of groups were holding events for the first time;
• Delivered nine national events online and in venues;
• Were rated by 89% of attendees at events as providing a ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ programme; and
• Reached over 18,000 people that attended an event linked to the Festival.

Paul Wallace, our Campaigns and Social Innovations Manager said, “Scotland’s Climate Festival helped us to build new connections and develop community capacity across the country. The Festival has demonstrated and amplified the appetite for community climate action and we are encouraged to see this energy and commitment continuing through our work supporting the development of community climate action plans.

“We are proud that the Festival helped unlock opportunities for those that weren’t currently engaged in climate change action, and hope the legacy of that will see a broader range of climate conversations taking place locally across Scotland.”

Scotland’s Climate Festival was made possible thanks to funding from the Scottish Government.

You can read the report and check out some of the legacy resources on our website or watch the national events on YouTube.