Lisa Wilkinson

Lisa Wilkinson’s professional background for the last 20 years has been at Beamish, The Living Museum of the North, where she is Sustainability Manager, advocating for and driving change to ensure best practice for greener, sustainable solutions across the museum.

Lisa has a proven track record in project management, procurement, people and communication, and leadership. Lisa is an ambassador and champion of sustainability, not only at the museum, but in several networking groups, and sits on Durham County Council’s Climate Strategy Board, and on the Single Use Plastics Task Group; Association of European Open-Air Museums’ Sustainability Group; and the National Museum Directors’ Council Ecology Group.

In addition, Lisa has served as a Director on the Advisory Trust Board of New College Academies Trust since April 2024, joining the Trust’s Resources Committee in June 2024, where she is Vice Chair.

Lisa Wilkinson is speaking at the Green Museums Summit:

How SDG’s can impact your organisational strategy

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to transform our world. They are a call to action to end poverty and inequality, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy health, justice and prosperity. It is critical that no one is left behind.
In looking after our cultural heritage for future generations, we are uniquely placed to take a perspective beyond the short-term cycles of politics and economics. By preserving the cultural heritage of peoples everyday lives, the development of civilisation is depicted – we are places of learning, visualising traditions that have lived for centuries, but also how our past has created the climate crisis we now find ourselves in.

In my presentation, we will look at Beamish Museum’s journey to embed the sustainable development goals across the museum, including the importance of collaborating with colleagues, as well as external stakeholders, to identify what the SDGs mean for our museum and the impact on the wider region; and how we used this information to create an action plan and embed the goals in our sustainability strategy and start to change the mindset across our workforce to contribute to being a greener, cleaner, museum.