The project
Over two years, the Green Pledge Project explored Gloucestershire’s natural history by cataloguing and promoting environmental archives and taking practical steps to reduce its impact on the climate.
Heather Forbes, Head of Archives Services at Gloucestershire County Council, shares how the archives’ staff, volunteers and partners took a holistic green approach to the project.
“I was particularly keen to see if we could use environmental archives to help make a difference in reducing carbon footprints”, she says. “To me, it’s one of the most urgent things we’re doing in this country at the moment.”
The team carried out an audit, engaged communities with environmental archives, trained staff and an apprentice and co-created green-themed activities and exhibitions.
Creating a climate-friendly space
An environmental audit identified ways to help the archives reduce its carbon footprint. This included:
- introducing audits to review what waste can be reused and offering materials that are no longer needed, like ring binders and poly pockets, to visitors
- using Julie’s Bicycle online tools to measure power and water use
- sourcing materials locally from a scrap store and prioritising reuse before buying new items
- carrying out a biodiversity audit and installing solar panels and electric vehicle chargers
- reducing its digital footprint by 80%, including deleting unnecessary files and emails
- removing and replacing faulty air conditioning systems with low-energy alternatives using wine-cellar technology
Working in partnership to engage communities
In the archives’ community garden, the team worked with charities Project Grow and Wiggly. Together, they transformed the garden, which now provides organic food for Wiggly’s programmes for refugees and those in need of support.
The team also worked in partnership with artists on travelling exhibitions to enhance community engagement. This included a carved ‘Pledgehog’ where visitors fed their personal pledges through the sculpture.
Heather says: “We worked with Project Grow at the Cheltenham Science Festival, with over 3,500 children taking part in our activities there. It was lovely talking to them and showing them our garden shed plastered with copies of archives. We helped them think about where their food comes from by identifying plants in the garden we set up.”
The funding
We awarded £246,800 to Gloucestershire County Council in 2023 to support the project through our Dynamic Collections campaign, which helped organisations build resilience and open up their collections.
Gloucestershire Archives and the council’s Sustainability Team also provided additional funding.
The results
Gloucestershire Archives is now a more sustainable organisation, with a significantly reduced carbon footprint and lower energy bills. The team improved the building’s energy rating from a G to an A.
The project also:
- collected 175 new environmental collections, including 16 podcasts
- catalogued 12,591 maps, plans and records, which the team made accessible online for the first time
- engaged over 68,000 people
- supported 736 people to make personal environmental pledges
Wildlife has also returned to the site’s community garden. Heather says: “It has made a massive difference. We get far more birds and insects in the garden. We get goldfinches on the weeds that we’re letting grow in our car park, too.”
Sustainable Project of the Year Award
Gloucestershire Archives was a joint winner of the sustainability category at the Museums + Heritage Awards 2026 with Lambeth Palace. The award, which we sponsor, recognises innovative responses to the climate crisis.
Heather says: “It was an extraordinary honour for the team at Gloucestershire Archives to win Sustainable Project of the Year. It's raised our profile both externally and within the council. And we had great fun at the awards ceremony, too.”
The future
Gloucestershire Archives continues to reduce its environmental impact. “Once you've done something like this, you can't turn the clock back. It's embedded in your DNA.”
The archives set up a post-project green team to keep the momentum and deliver the organisation’s environmental action plan.
It also plans to explore best practice for managing digital records and the environmental impact of AI.
Top tips
Heather shares her advice on how to embed sustainability into your project:
- “Work in partnership and take a holistic approach to sustainability in your organisation. Look at everything you do through a green lens.”
- “You don't have to reinvent the wheel. Learn from others and we hope that our website will provide inspiration.”
- “Hire project staff who are well connected already to green networks and potential partners. That helped us reach new audiences and strengthen our work.”
Developing your own project?
All projects we fund must consider how they will protect the environment. Our environmental sustainability guidance provides information on how to plan a heritage project with the planet in mind.
