Qualitative Measures to Guide and Communicate Your Green Efforts | ZMINA:Resilience Capacity Building

Aims

This capacity building session — the final instalment of the ZMINA:Resilience Green Culture series — addressed the practical and communicative challenges that cultural organisations face once they have decided to act on environmental sustainability: how to assess impact when the most important effects are behavioural and qualitative, how to prioritise across a vast and sometimes overwhelming range of possible actions, and how to communicate honestly about green efforts without perfect data. Drawing on five years of experience in Aarhus, Denmark, where climate accounting is embedded in the city's cultural policy, the session grounded these questions in real examples from working institutions — combining strategic frameworks with a frank account of what is actually difficult and what, above all, gives hope.

The session aimed to help participants:

• Understand why culture has a unique and significant role in driving the green transition, beyond reducing its own operational footprint
• Navigate the distinction between measurable operational actions (energy, transport, materials) and harder-to-quantify outward-facing actions that shift norms and behaviour
• Apply research-based insights about behavioural change to the design of green cultural initiatives
• Learn from concrete examples of Aarhus cultural institutions that have found practical, integrated approaches to green sustainability
• Communicate about green efforts clearly and confidently, even in the absence of perfect data or complete carbon accounting
• Understand the concept of social tipping points and how cultural organisations can contribute to them
• Use practical templates to design both single green actions and longer-term green strategies
• Recognise the strategic and motivational value of organising collectively with other cultural actors

Trainer

Signe Spelling Østergaard is a Cultural Advisor within the Cultural Department (Kulturforvaltningen) of Aarhus Municipality, Denmark, where she has supervised independent cultural institutions within the performing arts and managed the city's Cultural Development Fund (Kulturudviklingspuljen). Her background spans urban renewal, inclusion and diversity, and green sustainability within culture. She has been central to Aarhus's pioneering climate accounting requirements for cultural institutions — the first such framework embedded in a Danish municipal cultural policy — and has facilitated the Aarhus Green Cultural Network, which brings together 20–30 cultural institutions for shared learning, resource exchange, and collective advocacy. She is also a practising musician.

Content

The session moved through four interconnected parts, with a caption card marking the break midway: an opening that establishes why qualitative approaches to green action matter, how climate reporting works in practice, and what the research on behavioural change tells us; a set of concrete Aarhus examples showing how to integrate green transition into existing work; a post-break section on communication dilemmas and social tipping points; and a closing section on collective organising, practical templates, and key takeaways. Throughout, Signe wove together conceptual frameworks, research insights, and concrete institutional examples — all grounded in the conviction that culture can make a real difference in the green transition, provided it acts strategically, communicates honestly, and does not try to do everything at once.

1. Introduction: Culture, Climate, and Quality Assessment
2. Aarhus Examples: Integration, Not Addition
3. Communication Dilemmas and Social Tipping Points
4. The Green Cultural Network, Strategy Templates, and Key Takeaways

The session was held on June 24, 2026 in English.