Theatre Green Book One Toolkit – Site Specific & Outdoor productions

Energy

• Do you need to use power at all for your performance / output? Follow the power hierarchy to assess need.
• Can you take mains power from a local residence or business?
• Does your local authority have power pillars / street lights / other power sources nearby that you could seek permission to use?
• Can you collaborate with your local authority to find joined-up solutions to power usage? It may be possible to find ways to get mains power points installed in locations that are frequently used for outdoor presentations (such as parks or market places).
  Is your town or city powered on a renewable tariff? Talk to your local council about changing if they have not already.
• Work with your power distribution team to try and identify ways of reducing the power needs of an event – can you break down your distribution so that you are only using what you need at any moment in time?
• Think about creating power budgets for incoming companies to understand better in advance the power needs of a particular show.
• Find out where the meters are for power supplies or consider investing in standalone power meters to aid monitoring of consumption, to track usage and plan for future needs and feed into carbon footprint.
• Consider solar / battery power options when a source is needed away from the grid.

Materials

The following notes are in addition to the Theatre Green Book’s general guidance for making.
• Establish an environmentally-focussed procurement policy if you don’t already have one.
• Hire in equipment rather than buying where possible. If buying is required, make sure you have a plan for what happens to that equipment after you have used it.
• Work with hirers to share costs of equipment.
• Store and save equipment for future use.
• Store touring companies sets and equipment in between dates. Use existing storage space to reduce the amount of freighting required and support slow touring.
• Take things theatres or other makers throw away and make use of it.
• If you need to make or purchase something, make sure your designer and builder are building it to last outdoors and that is easy to break down to transport or store.
• Make sure your designer and builder think about the future too. How can you reuse the whole install/piece of work in different places, different contexts etc.
• Design circularity in from the beginning.
• Use standard equipment for sets and décor such as pedestrian barriers, scaffolding poles, staging etc.
• Design sets that interact with standard equipment, so it still has artistic merit but less waste and less touring weight.
• Share resources with other partners – such as flags, décor and site dressing, as well as other items that you only use for a small part of the year that other festivals could also use.
• Ensure your reusable materials are not event, year, brand or colour-specific. This way they can be used again and again and also shared with other events and organisers.
• Consider collaborating with other partners to create a city-wide reuseable hard cup scheme. This eliminates the need for single use cups for your bars.
• Plan promotional material sustainably – recycled paper, eco-friendly inks, reduction of print copies etc.
• Set up a Good Suppliers spreadsheet with a traffic light system of checklists which can be adapted by all.

Transport

• Encourage your audiences to use public transport, cycle or walk to your events (see guidance in Theatre Green Book: Sustainable Operations).
• Survey audiences and their travel methods to be able to have data to try and reduce impact.
• Survey data available can be reported in Julies Bicycle Creative Green Tools (carbon equivalents calculator) in the Audience Travel section. This includes walking and cycling.
• Think about pairing with a city-based bike/scooter scheme to offer travel to and from the venue
• Support artists and visiting companies to use train travel, rather than car or plane.
• Think about partnering with a vehicle manufacturer who can supply you with electric vehicles for your event.
• List Park and Ride schemes, train stations, bus stops and bike racks on your events listing pages or maps. Prioritise sustainable transport options listing car travel last in these materials or even consider not advertising car travel options.
• Approach local transport operators to scope discounts and incentives for audiences to use a sustainable transport method.
• Make sure that incoming international companies have more dates in the UK than just your own. Where possible, discuss festival dates with surrounding festivals, to try and encourage circular touring routes from visiting companies. Work with other festivals to create tours and reduce the impact of international travel and freight.

Waste

• Think about language at your event. Try referring to ‘waste’ as ‘resource’ at your events.
• Provide recycling points – considering signage and colour coding to make it easy for audiences to recycle.
• Liaise with your local Waste Company to understand how they treat waste, recycling, and food waste so that you can tailor your provision for artists and audiences.
• Create sustainability criteria for concessions who sell food at your event. Supporting them to become more sustainable in their practice.
• Ensure your food caterers only use food and drink packaging and utensils made from biodegradable or compostable materials e.g. corn starch, bagasse, wood pulp and palm leaf.
• Partner with a food waste charity such as ‘Olio’ and ‘TooGoodToGo’ to avoid wastage at the end of each day.
• Ensure the sale and use of single-use, non-recyclable items will be strictly prohibited on your site.
• Think about standardising your artist riders and promoting local, seasonal produce. Offer a ‘menu’ of food and drinks. You can work towards the offer being more sustainable and reduce waste as a result.
• Monitor waste volumes – ensuring you obtain waste transfer notes from waste management company to feed into carbon footprint.

Water

• Think about liaising with your local authority to install mains water on site. This will enable you to provide clean drinking water for your crew, artists, and audiences.
• Can you take a water bowser on site to do this job if not?
• Request that your crew and artists bring their own reusable drinking bottles.
• Use public toilets/compostable/trenches where possible.
• Understand if there is mains sewerage on your site that you could make use of to reduce the need to truck grey water off site.

Communicate

• Communicate your work with audiences in a way that encourages dialogue and inspiration.
• Look towards training for your contractors, freelancers, volunteers, and delivery team on sustainable initiatives.
• Showcase innovative/create ideas for behaviour change. Integrate sustainability into the festival offering, encourage engagement over social media.
• Share your work with your colleagues in the sector to encourage an ethos of openness and transparency.
• Fold sustainability into organisational strategy to associate this messaging into communications with audiences.
• Find and develop relationships with accommodation providers/hotels with a good sustainability policy and work with them to accommodate your touring artists. Encourage artists to ‘Skip the Clean’/opt-out of daily room cleans.

Toolkit originally developed with contributions from the Without Walls team and Environmental Responsibility Action Group.

2024 revisions with contributions from Without Walls, and members of the Environmental Responsibility Action Group, including:
Aileen Ging – Wild Rumpus
Mark Denbigh – Norfolk & Norwich Festival
Matt Evans – Birmingham Hippodrome