We have partnered with Friends of Medlock Valley, a local community group, to promote biodiversity in inner city Manchester. Home to thousands of trees and open grasslands, the Medlock Valley is one of the city’s wildest and most ignored spaces, with few signs of the state or local authorities such as bins, benches or signage. This project aims to bring the University’s expertise and resources to scale up the group’s initiatives, with a series of workshops on historical memory through soil and trees, an appraisal of its ecological assets by staff in Earth Sciences at the University, and a durable set of information boards, wayfinders and artistic installations to embed the partnership within the community for years to come. 

Bee Circular UoM is a student-led initiative focused on reducing food waste and fostering sustainability within the University of Manchester and its surrounding community through strategic partnerships and volunteer engagement.

The University has partnered with Hazaar to provide our students with an eco-friendly, zero-waste platform for buying and selling pre-loved items online and at on-campus market events. The Hazaar app connects students within a Manchester-specific marketplace, eliminating the need for postage and offering a more affordable and sustainable way to shop while supporting student entrepreneurs. 

Sustainability Action Month is our biggest sustainability event of the year involves four weeks of interactive activities and events to enhance understanding of the climate crisis and showcase easy ways to embed sustainable practices at work, on campus, and at home. We share practical hints, tips, and solutions that we encourage you to embed in your everyday lives at work, on campus, and at home.  

Talk 200 is a lecture and podcast series from the University to mark our bicentenary: 200 years of making a difference. We’re reflecting on our past, celebrating our present and looking to the future – and Talk 200 invites listeners to be part of the journey.  

The series comprises a mix of in-person and live-streamed lectures and recorded podcast episodes. Our podcast host, Manchester aficionado, author and University of Manchester alumnus Andy Spinoza, is joined by a diverse line-up of guests from our community. Topics include health, digital and AI, climate change, equality and justice, and more. 

A partnership dedicated to tackling the impact of textile waste in the football industry has been launched between The University of Manchester and RÆBURN Design – a leading sustainable fashion studio.  The new project, KIT:BAG by RÆBURN, will work with local sportswear suppliers and the local community to transform surplus football shirts into unique reusable tote bags, while educating them of the environmental impacts of textile waste and how we can extend the life of our garments. It aims to provide a fun, responsible way to keep kits in circulation while shining a light on the large-scale problem in the industry.

Maretório is a project focussed on making space to facilitate meaningful communication about climate change for those vulnerable, coastal communities in Brazil who may be most affected by it. University of Manchester team members have collaborated with other institutional partners to create educational resources and children’s games to empower local people to engage with climate change as they view it and using language that is personal and relevant to them.

Manchester Museum’s Top Floor is a space for people to come together to learn, share ideas and connect with the community. You’ll find education groups, charities, artists, writers, staff and students co-working and collaborating here, with a shared commitment to social and environmental justice. The Museum has also appointed Hannah Hartley as the Environmental Action Manager, where she works across all areas of the museum to drive forward its ambitions in environmental thinking and action, establishing sustainable practices, and building on the Museum’s rich experience in developing narratives and programming in response to the climate crisis.

We launched the first ever museum-sector-specific Carbon Literacy toolkit as part of Roots & Branches, a partnership between Manchester Museum, Museum Development North West (MDNW), and The Carbon Literacy project. The toolkit helps museum professionals and volunteers undertake training, to then certify as Carbon Literate. This foundational work supports staff, volunteers, and partners to build their understanding of climate action, so that they can make informed sustainable choices. The project also encourages museums to develop organisational pledges to act against climate change.

Our University plays a key role in providing expertise on how we can reach the University’s goal of Zero Carbon by 2038, which is pivotal to influencing stakeholders to take greater action in addressing climate change. The Green Summit brings together residents, businesses, policy makers and community groups that share a determination for the city-region to be carbon neutral by 2038.

A renowned engagement expert from our School of Environment, Education and Development is using her Ketso Connect community and stakeholder engagement toolkit to help the government’s Natural England advisers launch their National Recovery Network.

This network aims to restore 75% of protected sites and to create or restore 500,000 hectares of additional wildlife-rich habitat.

The project is piloting public and civic engagement models with local libraries across Manchester.

Our Manchester Museum Vivarium is dedicated to the conservation of reptiles and amphibians.

We recently partnered with Panama Wildlife Charity PWCC on non-invasive research and conservation education involving local communities in the Santa Fe National Park in Panama.

This led to a world first in 2021: one of the world’s rarest toads, the Harlequin Frog, was successfully bred in captivity outside its country of origin, at our museum.

We also curate a world-famous FrogBlog and deliver a digital Learning with Lucy conservation programme for schools.

At our Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre, we partnered with IncredibleOceans to deliver outreach talks and programmes to raise awareness of how oceans are facing threats from development and overfishing, climate change, pollution, acoustics and more.

We teamed up with scientists, creatives, community organisations, campaigners, companies and broadcast media to maximise the impact of this educational outreach activity.

Climate scientists at our Tyndall Centre are partnering with Bristol-based band Massive Attack to jointly examine the carbon footprint of the music industry.

Utilising data from the Massive Attack touring schedule will provide information and guidance to the wider music industry to reduce negative environmental impacts.

Our academics are involved in GrowGreen, a five year, EU-wide project that promotes nature-based solutions to climate change.

The project involves a range of citizens, business and public-private partnerships in neighbourhoods and across cities to promote learning, sharing and replicating nature-based solutions and strategies to urban sustainability challenges.

Our Manchester Museum has been awarded Arts Council England and National Lottery Project Grant funding for an ambitious two-year partnership project in collaboration with Museum Development North West and the Carbon Literacy Trust. The project will accelerate the museum sector’s ability to respond to the climate crisis.

The Museum will host the ‘roots’: creating a nationally significant co-working hub of cultural environmental action that will bring together museum staff, educators, environmentalists, artists, researchers, third sector organisations and students.

Our Towards Inclusive Environmental Sustainability research project is engaging with communities of Pakistani and Somali heritage (two of the largest and fastest-growing groups in Manchester) on research to understand how knowledge and practices of migrants from the Global South contribute to building just and sustainable cities in the Global North.

Our Policy@Manchester publication On Air Quality explores how air pollution affects public health, economic outcomes and acts to widen existing inequalities.

Some of the recommendations include extending projects such as the Manchester Urban Observatory and citizen science projects like Britain Breathing to provide accurate on-the-ground information about poor air quality, which disproportionally affects already-disadvantaged communities.

We’ve also helped create the Clean Air for Schools Framework, which engages and educates the next generation to help them and their families make cleaner air choices.

Millions of smallholder farmers worldwide lack access to reliable and cost-effective water supplies for irrigation.

We’re working with small-scale farmers in Africa and Asia, governments and development agencies to design and assess technological, economical and institutional solutions to improve water access, livelihoods, and resilience to climate change.

Our Take a Bite out of Climate Change partnership aims to share the scientific consensus about how food and agriculture contribute to climate change. It funds easily accessible information and fun activities for citizens such as Climate Food Flashcards, Farming for the Future workshops and the free e-book Food and Climate Change – Without the Hot Air.