Glasgow Future Fair 2026
Reflections and key takeaways
What a day! We gathered together last week at The Social Hub in Glasgow’s Merchant City, and I think everyone who attended has been on a high ever since. With participants from the UK and USA, it felt like the project was really reaching an international audience, while never losing sight of the key local learnings.
We had designed the agenda to be busy and quick paced, and this seemed to work - albeit with a long break for coffee in the middle :) It was a joy to see people reading our “Stories from the Future” publication, and understanding the depth of the work we had delivered.
For me, there were three key takeaways from the day:
Communities have to be at the heart of everything we do. This isn’t just to say we need to listen to communities, or consult with them, or have them on steering groups; it means that if communities aren’t at the heart of a project, driving the direction of travel, developing their own ambitious plans, then the project will not have worked.
Strong partnerships are the platforms which communities need to deliver the work they are planning. Without Creative Climate Futures, the partners on the steering group might never have come together - but all have played pivotal roles in the success of the project. Crucially, the involvement of the artists helped to unlock some of the latent potential within the project.
Projects like this never stop. While we have got to the end of this specific funding window, the work we have done in the two pioneer neighbourhoods will continue. This is really exemplified in the stories we have collated, which demonstrate just how meaningful the project has been to those on the ground. Yes, we had stats, yes, we got our reports in on time, but the true value of the project is told through those stories.
What happens next? That remains to be seen. We’ll have regular check-ins with the neighbourhoods to see what additional support we might be able to provide. And we remain confident that the work we have done can be applied to other areas, other communities, other neighbourhoods with an ambition to build a climate-ready future.
Stay tuned for the next chapter of Creative Climate Futures!
