Green Impact

On Wednesday July 20th The Whitworth Art Gallery was presented with a Bronze Award in the Green Impact Award Scheme.

Green Impact Universities: is an enviromental accreditation scheme with a competitive streak that helps and supports university departments to improve their environmental performance.
Green Impact The University of Manchester is run by the University of Manchester, The University of Manchester Students Union and the Enviromental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC).

The purpose of Green Impact is to reduce the environmental impacts of the University of Manchester by encouraging, rewarding and celebrating good practice within departments.

The scheme is based on a number of predetermined criteria, each relating to a practical action that will help make a department greener. As a minimum the participating departments are asked whether or not they are meeting the 20 bronze criteria needed. The criteria included points on reducing waste, reusing waste, recycling waste, electricity awareness, heating, travel, procurement, greening teams, action plans and communications. For each criteria implemented there is scope for the department to score higher on your green impact score and in future years this can be improved to potentially help towards a silver or gold award. The scheme is in fact part of a wider 2 year programme called Degrees Cooler which is run by the NUS and sponsored by Defra’s Greener Living Fund.Manchester University is one of 20 universities selected to take part in this flagship behaviour change programme and last year over 27,000 students and staff got involved in Degrees Cooler preventing 1275 tonnes of CO2 from being pumped into the atmosphere.The four main objectives that the programme aims to positively make an impact on are

• saving energy
• recycling more
• eating local sustainable food
• reducing flying

The next aim for the Whitworth is to achieve the Silver Standard which is a further 15 applicable silver criteria plus a 100 bonus points. Can we achieve this? Yes, we are confident we can, with a good team effort from the Whitworth’s enviromental champions. Watch this space!

Beverly Slater.

What lies beneath?

Over the next couple of years the Whitworth will be involved with a project to find out a bit more about our lovely park. A project being run by the University Archaeology department and Manchester Museum will look at the history, archaeology and biodiversity of Whitworth Park.

Working closely with a range of volunteer groups and local schoolchildren, the project will equip participants with new heritage-based skills to help them explore, reveal and interpret the ‘hidden’ history of the Park. For the wider public, the project aims to offer new insights into the historic significance of Whitworth Park, and find out more about the people who have used it and the wildlife that inhabits it

Two seasons of community archaeology fieldwork (in September 2011 and September 2012) will focus on the excavation of some of the hidden features of the Park. There will be a chance for a wide range of local people to get involved in excavation, cleaning finds and cataloguing, and there will be an annual open day and daily public tours of the sit led by students and volunteers.

Oral history interviews will capture public memories and thoughts about the Park and at the end of the project all of the findings will be brought together in a temporary exhibition at Manchester Museum.

If you have memories of the park you’d like to share or even fancy a bit of a dig look out for further information here!

Bronze Award for the Gallery

The Gallery is one of a number of University departments to be awarded the bronze award under the Green Impact scheme run by the University and the Students Union. You can find out more about the scheme here: http://www.eauc.org.uk/how_green_impact_work

The picture shows Nicola Walker and Jo Beggs, two of the Gallery’s Environmental Champions with the trophy.