During Zero Waste Week (the first full-week of September) we encourage people to reduce waste and live a more sustainable lifestyle. Today’s blog is by our Loans Officer, Emily Goalen who has been working hard to find new and creative ways to reuse and recycle some of the crates used to transport pieces from the collection.
The collections of artworks and objects in the care of Aberdeen Archives, Gallery & Museums are not just loved by visitors to our venues, they are nationally and internationally admired, and often in demand by museums and galleries in the UK and overseas for special exhibitions and displays.
An unfortunate by-product of lending artworks is packaging. We store a number of crates for the paintings that tend to go on loan regularly and so a certain amount of re-use is possible. Crates are specifically built for an artwork so that it can be transported safely and securely. Re-fitting a crate requires specialist equipment and technical know-how, so over many years we have been left with a number of crates that are unlikely to be used again.
The good news is that things are improving, more companies are offering re-useable options but as with all things eco, until they are widely used, they are prohibitively expensive. The borrower covers the cost of packing but persuading borrowers to pay more when budgets for exhibitions are already tight, is difficult. Some of the fine art agents we work with recycle wooden crates or refit them, offering them for hire instead of purchase. Hire crates are again more expensive (due to storage costs) and given our location, out with the central belt, drop off and collection is logistically too difficult. Until there are more options on the market, reducing the use of crates for overseas loans is complex.
A year or so ago I completed a review of our crates and came up with a list that weren’t fit for re-use. I put a message on our council-wide Green Champs channel - an internal volunteer network that make sustainable changes in the workplace - to see if they could be used as planters.
Simon Whitworth, Countryside Ranger and fellow Green Champ, put me in contact with Fresh Community Wellness SCIO (Freshcom), a charity working closely with the council to create a community garden for the Seaton neighbourhoods. The volunteers at Freshcom did an incredible job, re-purposing and upcycling the crates into different shapes and sizes of planter for flowers and vegetables.
Inspired by this success, Simon went on to create a project called ‘Crates to Plates,’ which relocated a further seven crates to the Best Western in Dyce, a hotel which is being used as temporary accommodation for Ukrainian refugees. Council gardeners re-purposed the crates and painted them in Ukrainian colours. Simon then worked with the charity Cfine to organise a vegetable planting workshop for residents who planted calendula, kale, mustard plants, beetroot, carrots, radishes, parsnips, mixed salad leaves and lettuce.
Elsewhere in the city, a final four crates were left with Hazlehead Grove Nursery. The Grove is a council run, social enterprise project involving a number of groups that provide opportunities to develop life skills and learning opportunities for people across the city. One of the crates was used for a short course run by ‘Healthy Minds,’ a council community learning mental health project. It was turned into a bed and then planted with a selection of spring bulbs. Other crates have been used around the Grove as tables, shelves and storage.
Loaning our collections to other Museums and Galleries isn’t the only activity that requires packaging at AAGM. We have to ensure that our collections are stored and transported between sites using packing techniques and materials which follow Museum and Gallery guidelines.
Our daily business isn’t too resource heavy, but in 2015 Aberdeen Art Gallery closed its doors to the public as it underwent a substantial redevelopment supported by Aberdeen City Council and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. This, coupled with a store move not long after, saw the relocation of thousands of objects.
Vulnerable objects required crates, others were packed in Jiffy foam and Polyurethane sheeting. Once the objects had been re-homed and unpacked at the new gallery and our store, Aberdeen Treasure Hub, I worked with two of our kick-start interns to sort through the packaging. Some packaging was kept for our own re-use but given the volume of objects that had moved, we had a large excess.
Sheets of poly were passed onto the Grove Nursery where it was used to line and cover planters to protect plants from frost. It was also used to create workspaces and line tables for activities such as eco-printing (printing with organic materials).
As our gallery redevelopment reached completion, Culture, Perth & Kinross were finalising plans for their own so it made sense to offer them some of our excess materials. Anna Zwagerman, Conservation Officer for Culture Perth and Kinross said,
"Culture Perth & Kinross museums & galleries were happy to accept a consignment of used but clean packing materials from Aberdeen Archives, Gallery & Museums. At Perth, we are going through a major project to open the new Perth Museum to the public in Spring 2024, and we have a large number of collections to pack and move to their new display location. We are working towards net zero and are attempting to only buy new materials during this project that have a life after the project end date. We were therefore pleasantly surprised to be contacted by Aberdeen’s Loans Officer, Emily Goalen, with the offer of left-over packing materials. These materials, including Jiffy foam, will be used to protect Perth’s collections during transport, especially those too large to pack into boxes. We currently have a workspace in Perth Art Gallery where visitors can look through a Perspex window to see us at work with these materials, so please come and have a look at the packing in progress!"
The Museum & Gallery sector are making great strides at re-thinking the way we do things. We are becoming more flexible, more creative. The range of sustainable products available to us is slowly expanding. It feels like progress is slow but knowing that these packing materials have not only been re-used but have saved charities money and benefited communities across the city motivates me to keep chipping away at it. Working for a council and being part of a council wide Green Champs network has its benefits - there is always someone to help, someone who needs something or someone with a great idea.
