The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is celebrating a successful year of Carbon Literacy Training in 2025.
We offer Museum specific Carbon Literacy training to all our staff and volunteers. The training was developed by Museum Development North West as part of their Roots and Branches initiative.
In total we ran five sessions which were spread throughout the year. Staff and volunteers from across the organisation came together for a day of lively discussion and learning. At the end of each session, attendees made two pledges – one individual and one group pledge – for actions they would take in the workplace to reduce our organisation’s Carbon footprint. Pledges included exploring more sustainable sources of animal feed at Mary Arden’s Farm, using native hazel staves rather than bamboo in our gardens, reducing single use PPE by our Collections team and considering ways our front of house teams can talk to our visitors about the sustainable aspects of life in the sixteenth century. These small changes all add up to reduce our overall carbon footprint.
Andrew Anderson, our Environmental Health and Safety Officer, became an accredited Carbon Literacy trainer in 2025, recognising our in-house expertise in delivering this training. Alongside our own programme, Andrew and our Climate Action Volunteer Andrew Muir also deliver elements of the community Carbon Literacy Course designed and led by the team at Net Zero Stratford.
On 14th November 2025, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and Net Zero Stratford came together to celebrate the annual international Carbon Literacy Action Day. It was an opportunity for us to reflect on our successes and think about how can work together in future. With lots more opportunities for training and making pledges in 2026, the future for our Carbon Literacy programme is bright.
