VOLUNTEER TRAINING

Thank-you for joining our team and supporting us – we are delighted to be working with you. Choosing to volunteer could be one of the best decisions you make, for yourself and others. As a volunteer your priority is to be a good representative of Hebden Bridge Arts. Please always be friendly and leave a positive lasting impression.

To help you volunteer to the best of your ability, please download and read our information below, which cover everything you need to know about volunteering with us.

Optional Volunteer E-Learning

Below are some recommended e-learning videos for you to access which offers additional training for your role with us.

What is volunteering?

What are the benefits for the volunteer?

What does inclusion look like?

Watch this short video to discover real-life accounts of people who have had positive and negative experiences of inclusivity and the impact it has had on them.

An introduction to unconscious bias

Being inclusive is ensuring you understand that everyone has biases and that they can impact your decisions, relationships and how you perform your daily activities.

Climate change explained in under 2 minutes

The impacts of climate change

Optional Carbon Literacy Training (in a nutshell)
with grateful thanks to Sustainable Arts in Leeds (SAIL) www.wearesail.org

Carbon Literacy is a term used to describe an awareness of climate change, and the climate impacts of mankind’s everyday actions. Carbon Literacy is the knowledge and capacity required to create a positive shift in how mankind lives, works and behaves in response to climate change.

Video 1: Paris Climate Agreement

Video 2: IPCC 2021 Report

There are a lot of organisations working towards tackling global climate change at various scales, and various targets being set for various different dates.

Starting at the top we have the Paris Climate Agreement, which was drafted at the UN COP 21 conference in Paris in 2015 and then signed in 2016. The UN COP conference (or United Nations Conference of the Parties) is the annual United Nations conference on climate change.

The Paris Climate agreement essentially said that the world cannot warm by more than 2°C (ideally no more than 1.5°C,) but didn’t tell each country how much they had to cut their emissions by and when they had to do it by, instead that was left to the individual countries to decide.

On 9th August 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released their 6th assessment report, their first being released in 1990.

The report shows that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are responsible for approximately 1.1°C of warming since 1850-1900, and finds that averaged over the next 20 years, global temperature is expected to reach or exceed 1.5°C of warming

Unless there are rapid, sustained and large-scale reductions of climate change-causing greenhouse gas emissions, including CO2, methane and others, the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C compared to pre-industrial levels, as enshrined in the Paris Agreement, will be beyond reach.

On 27th June 2019, the United Kingdom became the first major economy to pass a law stating that the United Kingdom will bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by year 2050. A little note on terminology here:

Carbon Neutral/Net Zero – This means that you are still allowed to produce some greenhouse gases, but this is balanced with carbon saving measures. Examples of this include planting trees, Carbon Capture and Storage or purchasing Carbon Offset credits
Zero Carbon – This means that no carbon dioxide is produced at all (In practice, this basically means don’t burn fossil fuels)

The road map of how the UK aims to achieve this goal has been developed by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC).
There are many people that say that it doesn’t matter what the targets are, it is important that we transition to a net zero society as fast as humanly possible.

On 27th March 2019, Leeds City Council became one of the first councils to declare a Climate Emergency in the City and declare that Leeds will work towards being Net Zero by 2030, 20 years earlier than the target that the UK government has set out.

Video 3: Explaining the Greenhouse Effect

Global Warming is defined as “The long-term heating of Earth’s climate system observed since the pre-industrial period (between 1850 and 1900) due to human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere”

Climate change is defined as “A long-term change in the average weather patterns that have come to define Earth’s local, regional and global climates”
At its most basic, Global Warming is the earth getting warmer, Climate Change is the changes in weather because of the earth getting warmer.

Video 4: Climate Change and Inequality

Many socially deprived neighbourhoods are also socially vulnerable to climate events, because it’s not just about the likelihood and degree of their exposure to events such as flooding and heatwaves, but also by the potential for losses in their well-being as a result of these events.

Already vulnerable people and people from ethnic minority groups are particularly at risk. Please watch the video by David Lammy MP on why climate justice can’t happen without racial justice.

The Carbon Map - interactive map tool
Climate change and economic inequality are inextricably linked. A recent report from Oxfam revealed that the poorest 3.5 billion people on the planet are responsible for only around 10% of the total emissions from individual consumption, yet are living overwhelmingly in the countries most vulnerable to climate change.

In fact, the richest 10% of the world are responsible for around half of the world’s carbon emissions.

This carbon map is such an insightful resource to help convey how different countries fit into the climate change picture – both in terms of countries most responsible for the causes and the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis. The interactive map provides a more nuanced picture, by collating data from various different sources to show where the fossil fuels that become CO₂ are extracted from, where they’re burned and therefore release emissions, and where the resulting goods and services are consumed.

It also includes a historical perspective in the form of cumulative emissions from the last 150 years, and one view of potential future emissions in the form of each country’s estimated fossil fuel reserves.

Video 5: How do we know global warming is real?

The 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 2005, and the previous 5 years are the hottest on record. There is overwhelming evidence that the average temperature is rising and wide agreement from many different scientific bodies.

Temperatures are rising, and they are rising fast.

There are some scientists who disagree with the notion of human caused climate change, however there is overwhelming consensus. A widely shared statistic is that 97% of climate scientists agree that human caused climate change is real and happening right now.

Video 6: Indicators of a warming world

We can measure atmospheric CO2 levels and also we can measure average temperatures, but what other things would we expect to see if the world was in fact warming?

According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration & US National Climatic Data Centre, we would expect to see the following happen: Glaciers will retreat, Tree-lines will shift poleward and upwards, Spring will start to come earlier, Species will start to migrate poleward and upward, Sea ice level will drop, Sea level will rise, Sea surface temperature will rise.

We are seeing all of these phenomena.

Video 7: Impact of Climate Change on the UK

Is everything lost?

The UK has already begun to be affected by climate change. According to the committee on climate change (CCC):

The average sea level has already risen by around 16cm in the last 100 years and could increase by 8 to 115cm by the end of the 21st century (compared to the 1981-2000 average) depending on location and future greenhouse gas emissions.

Average temperatures in England over the last decade (2008-2017) were around 0.8°C higher than they were in the 1970s and 1°C higher than pre-industrial times (1850-1900).

Extremely wet days are increasing.

Climate Change is not a distant and far away thing that affects other people, it is happening right here, right now and without an increase in climate action, things are only going to get worse.

No! We still have time to fix this. The IPCC report stated that we have until 2030 to “lock in” the changes we need to make to bring about the maximum 1.5°C rise, but this would require “Rapid, far reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”

If we start acting now, we can:
Avoid an estimated 2.4 million premature deaths from outdoor air pollution annually by 2030.

Prevent as much as 52 million tonnes of crop losses per year.

Slow the increase in near-term global warming by as much as 0.6°C by 2050.

Save over 1 million species from extinction.

Even if all of the scientists are wrong and we’re not heading towards a climate catastrophe, what do we have to lose by acting? Isn’t having all of energy independence, cleaner air and livable cities worth fighting for anyway?

Volunteers Hub