For Cyprus, the challenge is particularly urgent. Rising temperatures, more intense heatwaves, and extreme weather events are creating new pressures on museum collections and historic buildings, while also affecting the way museums operate and serve their communities.
Coordinated by Dr Maria Shehade, Senior Research Associate at the CYENS Centre of Excellence, the ClimAid research project is taking on that challenge by asking a deceptively simple question: how can museums become resilient without compromising what makes them valuable in the first place?
Beyond protecting objects
The challenge is more complicated than simply turning up or down the air conditioning. Climate change can affect virtually every part of a museum—from the physical condition of collections and buildings to energy use, management practices and the institution’s ability to continue serving as a place of education, culture and community life.
ClimAid therefore, designed specifically around Cyprus’ climatic and institutional realities, aims to offer museums a practical way of identifying climate risks and deciding how best to respond. The ambition is to turn climate risk from an abstract environmental problem into something museum professionals can assess and act upon.
Designed with Museums, not just for them
One of the project’s distinctive features is that it does not assume that researchers alone can determine what is most important to protect.
Instead, ClimAid has worked closely from the outset with a range of museums across Cyprus, listening to the challenges they face, identifying their practical needs and incorporating their perspectives. This means asking not only “What could climate change damage?” but also “What would matter most if it were damaged, and to whom?”
That distinction is crucial. A technically sophisticated climate solution may nevertheless be inappropriate if it undermines the cultural, social or experiential values that people associate with a museum. The framework developed by the project will therefore incorporate the perspectives of museum professionals and the public before being tested and validated in a range of public and private museums collaborating with ClimAid, to ensure that climate measures are not only technically effective but also reflect the values attached to Cyprus’ heritage.
Where science meets the museum
To tackle a problem this complex, ClimAid brings together fields that do not traditionally sit around the same table: museum studies, heritage policy and management, risk analysis, environmental studies, and computer science.
The consortium- consisting of the CYENS Centre of Excellence as the lead organisation, the Department of Contemporary Culture of the Deputy Ministry of Culture of Cyprus and Periopsis Ltd, combines academic, public-sector and industry knowledge. The result is intended to be more than a technical risk-assessment exercise: it is a framework for changing how museums think about sustainability and resilience.
From research to action
The project’s final digital resource will bring this work directly to museums and policymakers. Users will be able to explore climate-related risks, consider adaptation strategies and consult evidence-based guidance tailored to Cyprus.
The larger ambition extends beyond protecting collections. By helping museums operate more sustainably and become better prepared for climate-related disruption, ClimAid hopes to change how museums approach the climate crisis: not as a series of isolated technical problems, but as a long-term question of institutional resilience, also supporting their long-term financial and social resilience.
For a country whose museums preserve centuries of history, preparing for the climate future is ultimately another form of heritage preservation: protecting not only what museums contain, but their ability to continue functioning as cultural and educational hubs for their communities and for generations to come.
The project is implemented under the Programme of Social Cohesion “THALIA 2021–2027” and is co-funded by the European Union through the Research and Innovation Foundation.
