The Full StorySustainable theatres:
Julie's Bicycle's theatre plan
Sustainable Abilities online
toolkit from Mo'olelo
EMERGENCE: creative practices and sustainable futures
new builds: Small World, Green Light Trust, Arcola
The report measures the impacts of touring and presents practical solutions to help cut emissions. Volume 1 was launched on 17 June at the Royal Albet Hall, and Volume 3, on Orchestras, will be launched on 3 July at the Royal Festival Hall.
Mojisola Adebayo talks about the effects of touring from a writer's and performer's perspective on our DVD on climate change and theatre here.
|
The research, which focuses on the core elements of touring, looked at 97 tour leg samples in 2009 across the UK and internationally. It estimates that approximately
13,400 toones of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent)emmissions were produced by touring theatre.
Touring bands produced 85,000 tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) emissions, and orchestras produced approximately 8,600 tonnes CO2e emissions. The majority of touring emissions are from overseas tours, with personnel travel and freight accounting for the majority share of those figures.
The report recognises that there is concern about the environment within the industry, and whilst high profile names are speaking out, that concern is not yet being reflected in the practices of touring. A number of barriers have been identified including the perceived financial cost; the availability of low carbon equipment and vehicles; and audience and artist expectation for spectacular shows.
Julie’s Bicycle have identified 11 priority recommendations aimed at those responsible for all aspects of a tour - artists, managers, suppliers, promoters and venues. These involve environmental planning to sit alongside artistic and financial contributions, and sharing the data on emissions produced from a tour, as well as a range of other actions which reduce environmental impacts.
Alison Tickell, director of Julie's Bicycle says, 'The assumption that if we focus hard enough on celebrity, regulation or science we will effect behavioural revolution, has proved distinctly shaky. By understanding the science and deploying our creativity in the manner in which we consider best we are much more likely to shape our future in a manner befitting our business.'
www.juliesbicycle.com/theatre
Sustainable Abilities launched - an online resource for arts responding to climate change and resource scarcity
Missions Models Money have launched the website for their project Sustainable Abilities, a project to help drive forward transformative responses to climate change from individuals and organisations working in the arts.
The site provides the resources related to the project and contains:
> a report by Hilary Jennings and Lucy Neal OBE on the UK arts and cultural sector’s response to climate change and resource scarcity
> an interactive google map of the UK initiatives referenced in the report
> the findings of a related survey of UK creative and cultural professionals
> additional resources.
It is intended as another point of connection in the growing network of support designed to help the UK’s cultural and creative sector. Sustainable Abilities is supported by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
www.sustainableability.com
www.missionmodelsmoney.org.uk
Toolkit for green theatre choices from Mo'olelo
Mo`olelo, the San Diego performing arts company, have completed their Green Theatre Choices Toolkit, information to help the theatre industry make choices that will cause less long-term environmental damage.
The toolkit lists the pros and cons of materials in these categories:
wood products
glass,ceramics, earthen materials
textiles
textile treatments and colourants
metals
plastics and foams
paint and adhesives
lighting and electronis
'audience interface materials' (marketing, mailers, playbills, food and beverage containers)
The pdf is downloadable here.
The toolkit was sponsored by a MetLife/TCG 'A-ha! Think It, Do It' grant. The reserach was partnered with Brown & Wilmanns Environmental Consulting and adopted their 'Green Choices' methodology.
moolelo.net
EMERGENCE: Creative practice and sustainable futures
In 2010/11 the arts sector in Wales came together at three major conferences in Cardiff, Swansea and Caernarfon for EMERGENCE: creative practice for a sustainable future, to share ideas, ask questions and get practical tools for a more sustainable practice.
Emergence: the document!, is downloadable and features 20 talks in the field of sustainability and the arts.
Emergence focused on two themes: developing a low-carbon infrastructure and developing the role of the arts as a crucible of ideas and visions for a low-carbon sustainable Wales. The report compiled by Fern Smith and Rhodri Thomas documents the talks given at the conferences from:
John E.McGrath, Artistic Director, National Theatre Wales
Philip Roth, playwright
Dr Jean Bolton, scientist and complexity theorist
Axel Tangerdig, Architect, Director and founder of Meta Theatre, Munich
Satish Kumar, Resurgence magazine
Paul Allen, Centre for Alternative Technology
Alison Tickell, Julie's Bicycle
Lucy Neal, Transition Town Tooting
Ben Todd, Arcola Theatre
Eluned Haf, Wales Arts International
Judith Knight, Artsadmin
and more.
Emergence was a partnership between Volcano and Cynnal Cymru-Sustain Wales. www.volcanotheatre.co.uk
New-build green theatres
Going green in theatre can be difficult when dealing with an existing property, but a few companies have been able to build new spaces, which strive to be very green.
In Cardigan, Wales, the Small World Theatre has built the Small World Center, which tries to be as carbon neutral as possible. Some of the innovations they have included include a roof that is 30% green, planted with sedum, with the other 70% using recycled slate. The water from the roof is harvested and recycled and used in toilets, showers and for washing up. Six large Douglas Firs, from a locally managed woodlot were used to support the building and the oak beams came right from Cardigan.
Bricks in the lobby were fired 100 years ago, from clay dug right on the site; sand for the concrete came from only a few miles away, and the lath for the lime/clay walls was local willow used as a wattle and daub wall. The building insulation comes from recycled paper. The new technologies called for imaginative solutions in order to fit with the rigid building regulations.
Green Light Trust’s new headquarters and training centre in Bury St. Edmonds, The Foundry, is a ‘deep-green’ building, made of recycled timbers for the framing. The wood was given a lime wash before it was re-erected, to protect it from insects and fungus. Lime is also a fire retardant.
The Small World Center opened on 17 June 2008. A majority of Small World Theatre’s many projects are environmentally focused, from their school touring show ‘Merlin’s Coat’, which has to do with global warming prophecies, to their new show 'Coedeuwydd', which was commissioned by the forestry commission and looks at trees as carbon sinks.
Lime was also used for all the plaster and the floor, as it ‘breathes’, thus protecting other elements of the building. Hemp, grown locally, was used for insulation. All interior walls were made of wattle and daub from their own clay and hazel. Rainwater is recycled.
As for heating, there is solar hot water and locally-produced biomass for heating. As much as possible, all material and labour were sourced within twenty miles of the site. It won a prestigious RIBA Sustainability Award in 2006.
London’s Arcola Theatre is in the planning stages for a new complex, Future Arcola, which they hope to begin in 2010 and which will be phased in. The center of the venue will be an expanded theatre, plus there will be studios, a cafè and bar, and an incubator for new technology. The official launch of took place on 15 December 2009. More information will be posted as the project starts.
 Headlines
|
»
|
New productions:
In This Place - Wed's & Sat's in Sept
|
| |
|
»
|
'Spirit in the Air' measures the climate impacts of Edinburgh Festivals - exhibition, events, talks
2 - 22 August
|
| |
|
»
|
Southbanquet at the South Bank, 31 August and 1 September
|
| |
|
»
|
People Profit Planet at World Stage Design 2013
5 - 15 September
|
| |
|
»
|
Our pick of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
|
| |
|
»
|
Edinburgh International Festival - 'Leaving Planet Earth'
|
| |
|
»
|
Environmental Art Festival Scotland - 30 Aug - 2 Sept
headline acts: Cinema Sark, The Rise and Fall of the Grey Mare’s Tail, Gimme Shelter, Glimpse
|
| |
|
»
|
14 ways to look at Scotland: 14 arts projects for Year of Natural Scotland
|
| |
|
»
|
Mayor's Thames Festival - 6 - 15 September
|
| |
|
»
|
Exhibitions:
Aquatopia - 20 July-22 Sept
|
| |
|
»
|
Conferences
|
| |
|
»
|
Events
|
| |
|
»
|
Seminars and talks
|
| |
|
»
|
Workshops
|
| |
|
»
|
TippingPoint starts crowd-sourced database of climate art
|
| |
|
»
|
'Actipedia' - crowd-sourced database of activist art - goes online
|
| |
|
»
|
CCANW moves to Innovation Centre at University of Exeter
|
| |
|
»
|
'Oceans': Tania Kovats and Fruitmarket Gallery ask for bottles of sea water for 2014 exhibition
|
| |
|
»
|
'On Ecology' edition of Performance Research published online
|
| |
|
»
|
'Environmentalism' edition of Research in Drama Education published online
|
| |
|
»
|
Kieran Lynn wins Nick Darke Award
|
| |
|
»
|
Greening theatre news
|
| |
|
»
|
The Man Who Planted Trees receives 2012 Award for Sustainable Production at the Edinburgh Fringe
|
| |
|
»
|
New books:
The Oil Road
Dark Mountain 3
The Book of Barely Imagined Beings
Readings in Performance and Ecology
Beautiful Trouble. A Toolbox for Revolution
|
| |
|
»
|
New Green Canterbury Tales: call for storytellers to make a pilgrimage
|
| |
|
»
|
Creu Cymru partners with Julies' Bicycle to support sustainability of 42 Welsh venues
|
| |
|
»
|
Julie's Bicycle and The Theatres Trust publish 'Energising Culture'
|
| |
|
»
|
'Culture and Climate Change: Recordings' available as a book, as an online pdf and as podcasts
|
| |
|
»
|
Arts Council England embeds environmental sustainability into funding agreements
|
| |
|
»
|
$750,000 (£470,000) funding for US musical about climate change - reviews are in
|
| |
|
»
|
Canadian Theatre Review focuses on 'Theatre in an Age of Eco-Crisis'
|
| |
|
»
|
Sustainable theatres:
Julie's Bicycle's theatre plan
Sustainable Abilities online
toolkit from Mo'olelo
EMERGENCE: creative practices and sustainable futures
new builds: Small World, Green Light Trust, Arcola
|
| |
|
»
|
Listen, watch, read: podcasts, videos and essays
Latest additions:
> TJ Demos: on dOCUMENTA (13), gardens, biotech & on Art After Nature
> TippingPoint Newcastle
> Wendell Berry: 'It All Turns on Affection'
> David Abram at Sensory Worlds
|
| |
|
»
|
Library:
'Survival of the Beautiful'
Mojisola Adebayo's collected plays
'Metaphors for Environmental Sustainabliity'
'Mediating Climate Change'
'Theatre Materials'
|
| |
|
»
|
E-script online: 'The Last Cuckoo'
|
| |
|
»
|
CSPA 2011 Fringe Awards for Sustainable Production:
2011- 'Allotment'
2010 - 'The Pantry Shelf'
|
| |
|
»
|
Recent news and still interesting
Sideways through Belgium
Not Waving but Drowning (LIFT event)
Ackroyd & Harvey in conversation
Choreographing Capital (Isaac Julien & David Harvey)
PSi#18 - a lot of ecology
and more ...
|
| |
|
»
|
Recent productions, including:
My Last Car, As the World Tipped, SEVEN ANGLES, Fissure, The Heretic, Greenland, Earthquakes in London, 3rd Ring Out, PROTOZOA, Grasses of a Thousand Colours, The Contingency Plan, Zameen, Moj of the Antarctic ...
|
| |
|
»
|
Exhibitions archive
|
| |
|
