GCC is an international coalition with members based in over 40 countries across the world. Many of our activities involve working with our members across continents and time zones to share knowledge and build community.

Meanwhile, in the visual arts sector more broadly, travel is routine and frequent - for research, networking, and career development, as well as to exchange ideas in an increasingly globalised art world. Unfortunately, a lot of this travel is by air.

As we’ve shown, much of this travel is hugely damaging to the environment - and there are currently no realistic alternatives to fossil-fuelled air travel on the horizon.

Based on the annual carbon reports submitted and published by GCC members, travel is typically the largest single source of emissions for our membership. For all of these reasons, travel is a key priority for GCC - and that’s why we’ve decided to develop our new climate conscious travel travel policy. 

GCC’s Climate Conscious Travel Policy

We developed our Climate Conscious Travel Policy to encourage and guide GCC staff, trustees and volunteers to travel responsibly while representing the charity.

We hope that our members and partners will follow suit and use GCC’s policy as a template for implementing their own changes. In the future, evidence of having implemented a travel policy will become a mandatory criteria for GCC Active Membership.

The policy requires that staff follow a Decision Tree before agreeing to any form of travel. Before any travel can be agreed, it must meet at least four of seven Climate Conscious Travel criteria.

All travel must be achievable within GCC’s annual carbon budget. If there is no carbon budget available, the journey will not be approved.

We will also follow a ‘trains first’ approach, which means that train travel will always be the preferred option where routes allow. We will plan as far in advance as possible to make use of low-carbon travel options, and examine travel schedules and combine trips when we can. 

We recognise that there are some key events we might want to attend - but we’ll consider working with GCC Ambassadors locally to minimise the need for carbon-intensive travel.

To keep track of our progress, we’ll measure and report our organisational emissions via our annual carbon report. We’ve also introduced staff incentives to support these changes, and as an organisation, we aim to be flight-free by 2031.

Keeping track of progress

This is the first version of the policy, and includes processes and steps that are entirely new ways of working for us. We anticipate that we will learn a lot in the process of implementing the actions, and that unforeseen outcomes - both positive and negative - will occur. We anticipate that the policy will need to be revised, or at least thoroughly reviewed, after the first year of use in order to adjust and improve it, and we welcome feedback and improvements.

We also recognise that, in some cases, more sustainable forms of travel are not always accessible to disabled and neurodivergent people, as well as those with caring responsibilities, health issues, or those who are experiencing personal or family emergencies. Our policy acknowledges this and allows for some exceptions to be made in extenuating circumstances.

Our policy is new and we are continually learning, but we’re proud to be taking this critical next step.