Environmental Sustainability

The headline results of that survey were that schemes, artists and venues across Rural Touring are enthusiastic and willing to do more to lessen their environmental impact, however, that we are facing a number of challenges which is making this more difficult and highlighting the need for broader local partnerships and infrastructure.

Resources

Below is a list of resources to help start thinking about becoming more sustainable.

Julie’s Bicycle NRTF Report

Sustainable productions Wallchart

Sustainable events guide

Theatre Green Book Materials Inventory

Sustainable Productions Toolkit

Creative Climate Tools

We also held a What Next? Rural meeting for our members, which focused on three key questions, below you can see the responses we gathered from those who attended.

Where do we start when it comes to touring more sustainably?

• Encouraging artists to have those conversations with venues really early on about what data is needed and in what formats, talk about where you can support each other, share, combine techniques.

• Feeding into national data collection programmes such as Audience Agency and now Illuminate will ensure that the amount of data collected is sufficient enough that its useful.

• Use a combination of data collecting techniques, work with the venue/artist to decide this in advance, be clear about what you are collecting and why.

• Be creative about how you collect the data. Smoking Apples show Kinder, about a Czech-Jewish evacuee in 1938, invites audiences to put how they travelled to the gig on a luggage tag and hang it onto the set. 

• The needs and well being of individuals must come before the need to meet environmental responsibilities.

• Find the support of an independent evaluator if you can to help create a relevant framework.

• Artist to lead on location and dates available, venues to become more flexible to allow for a more focused and localised tour schedule. 

What are the main challenges we face?

• Competing with each other to collect data from audiences to meet various funding requirements

• Venues can’t always share data or the process to collect that data as the information required can vary between parties

• Gathering enough data to ensure its useable

• The move away from paper to digital data collecting when paper has proven to work well for many, and digital, although useful, comes with its own challenges around the likelihood of people completing surveys once they have left the venue, getting internet connectivity to use QR codes and iPad

• The challenge of finding a balance between the needs of the team/individuals and the expectations to reduce our carbon footprint.

• Creating tours that require less travel while meeting restrictions such as the 50 mile radius between venues, the ability to secure dates with venues that allow for that etc..

How can NRTF support rural touring communities and artists to improve their sustainability?

• Use the Theatre Green Book tools and make them relevant and applicable to RT.

• Collect up examples and case studies from NRTF members to share ex. RTDI using two of the dance shows to better understand and monitor their energy use. make this a case study for sharing

• Continue to share the tools provided from Julie’s Bicycle

• Share Green Rider templates for venues – Smoking Apples will do this as part of their latest touring show outcomes.

• Share the examples of little wins to encourage others to make small achievable changes.

• Find ways of sharing results and findings.

• Provide contact details of independent evaluators who can offer support

• Offer tailored sessions on ways to reduce your carbon footprint for each part of the sector for venues, artists, theatre designers, schemes etc.

• Create an Environmental Footprint Map that includes venues that have good eco credentials, electric car charging points or those with points near by. Include recycling and resource centres. Train links, cycle paths, car sharing etc..