Electricity

Autumn – Winter ’13 Training Programme Dates Announced

This post comes from Creative Carbon Scotland

creative_carbon_scotlandPart of Creative Carbon Scotland’s mission is to support arts organisations, artists and audiences to be as environmentally sustainably as possible. To achieve this we provide artists and arts organisations with all of the practical training, tools and support they need to begin reducing their environmental impact through a year-round training programme across the country and one-on-one support via phone and email.

This enables individuals and organisations to get ahead of climate change regulations and make the most of the financial savings, artistic opportunities and market advantages to operating in more sustainable ways. Our training programme and website provide staff in any role in cultural organisations with the necessary skills and knowledge to identify where their key environmental impacts lie and implement actions to reduce their carbon footprint.

Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:

  • Changing their own behaviour;
  • Communicating with their audiences;
  • Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.

Our workshops cover all the areas of environmental impact you need to consider when it comes to measuring and reducing your carbon footprint. They are suitable to all levels and staff in any role in cultural organisations.

Workshop 1 provides organisations and individuals with an introduction to the key areas of carbon measuring and reduction to start thinking about – energy (electricity and gas), water, waste and travel. You will be introduced to the CCS Green Arts Portal and two widely used online tools developed especially for SMEs and cultural sector organisations.

Workshop 2 offers practical training for measuring and reducing travel- related carbon emissions. Travel is often the biggest area of environmental impact for cultural organisations and probably the most complex areas for data gathering. You will be lead through what is manageable for you to measure in your first year and trained on how to measure different types of travel undertaken by your organization as well as calculating your travel carbon footprint.

Green Meets are a less formal workshop where arts organisations have the chance to get together to talk about reducing their environmental impact – the areas they have had success in, what they’re struggling with and what they’re feeling inspired by. CCS will provide a specific focus such as developing an environmental policy or measuring audience travel, as well as allowing plenty of time for more general discussion between participants. We host local Green Meets across Scotland on a quarterly basis.

We have now finalised dates for local Green Meets taking place over October and November. To attend a Green Meet near you get in touch with Gemma@creativecarbonscotland.com.

Green Meets Schedule (venues and times tbc)

16th October– Edinburgh

21st October – Glasgow

23rd October – Inverness

28th October – Dumfries and Galloway

31st October – Dundee

6th November– Aberdeen

14th November– Highlands and Island (via video-conference)

Keep an eye on our Events page for more details and dates on workshops 1 and 2 to come shortly!

The post Autumn – Winter ’13 Training Programme Dates Announced appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

 

Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.

In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.

We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.

Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:

Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.

Go to Creative Carbon Scotland

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White Light & The Environment with Bryan Raven at WSD2013

Lighting-4001-1Mon 9 Sept 11.30 – 13.00

Simon Gibson studio

White Light is one the UK’s leading lighting suppliers and as such, their customers use a lot of electricity.  This presentation will try and discover what the real impact of stage lighting is and whether the tungsten light bulb should be banned.

The presentation will be followed by a question & answer session with guest panelists to answer some of the questions raised.

BUY TICKETS

View the White Light Green guide

The Electricity Fairy

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

The Electricity Fairy is a new film which approaches the issue of mountaintop removal from the everyday need for electricity:

“They reach out and flip the switch and the light comes on.  Well, there”s not a magic electricity fairy.  That electricity comes from a power plant that feeds on coal”.

But the question of coal-fired power is not a just a question for China and Appalachia, it is also a question for Scotland.  Should a major new coal-fired power station be built at Hunterston?

http://www.conchcampaign.org/

http://www.ayrshirepower.co.uk/

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.

Go to EcoArtScotland

Ashden signs up for 10:10

We sign up for 10:10


The Ashden Directory has signed up for 10:10, the collective campaign to reduce carbon emissions by 10% by the end of 2010.

Devised by the team behind Age of Stupid, 10:10 is supporting people and organisations in reducing their use energy in four areas: electricity from the national grid, fossil fuel use on site, road transport and air travel.
We’ll start by calculating our current energy use, see where reductions can be made, and keep track of our progress here on the news page. We are especially interested in the amount of electricity and fossil fuel use involved in supporting the internet, and in finding out how we might calculate the effects of our usage, and if possible reduce it. Beyond that, we are three people working part-time from our own homes. Any meetings are arranged to coincide with other purposes, and most journeys are by train. And, as shown in our video conference for ‘Earth Matters Onstage’ in Eugene Oregon, we are working on how more and different connections can be made without flying. We will start talking with the companies listed on the Directory, to see how they are reducing their energy usage. More on our progress here soon.

Critical elements of change…

This Post was originally posted to Mike Lawler’s ecoTheaer blog on May 8, 2007. We are reposting it here to share this ecoTheater classic with new readers while MIke continues to regain his health. You can read his blog about his ongoing battle with cancer, The “C” Word, by clicking here.

Everyday I think about this subject more, and everyday I try to talk to someone who might help me see it a little more clearly. Most recently, I had lunch with Natalie George and Michael Massey, a theater professor at St. Edward’s University in Austin. He is not an expert on this subject by any means, but just having the opportunity to speak with folks and get an idea of what they think is enormously helpful. Nowadays I even dream about green theater–and the question that keeps rolling around in my brain, persistent, nagging, is whether or not it’s even possible. And, if it is, do those in power (the artistic directors, the business managers, the board members) care enough to make it happen? Or, maybe that’s the wrong way of looking at it–the question really is: do they believe the issue is critical enough to influence the decisions they make about their mission, and their funding? I’m not sure. But I have come up with a rough list of the elements that are at the center of the dilemma, the things that must be scrutinized and addressed if any of us are to help curb the world’s destructive path toward catastrophic environmental and human health dead ends.

1) The building —
    The buildings that house the performing arts may be the most detrimental to the environment of all. According to the U.S. Green Building Council(USGBC), commercial buildings are responsible for 70% of the electricity load in the United States. Furthermore, the USGBC estimates that “if half of new commercial buildings were built to use 50% less energy, it would save over 6 million metric tons of CO2 annually for the life of the buildings—the equivalent of taking more than 1 million cars off the road every year.” Those numbers are staggering. What’s worse, there is only one performing arts facility in the entire country that has taken the steps necessary to reduce its impact on the environment (see ecoLogue, April 26, 2007). This is not for lack of newly constructed or renovated facilities–consider the Guthrie’s new spaces, for which they spent nearly $200,000 on “utilities” in 2005! If theater facilities did their part in reducing the negative role that buildings play in our lives, we would make enormous strides.

2) Theatrical lighting systems —
    Chris Coleman of Portland Center Stage (PCS) told me last month that the necessary lighting equipment for the new Gerding Theater made it difficult to meet the USGBC LEED Platinum rating. Other areas of efficiency were ramped up significantly on the project in order to offset the amount of energy required by the desired system. While theatrical lighting companies, such as Electronic Theatre Controls, Inc. (ETC), have made moves toward efficiency (witness ETC’s ever popular line of Source Four equipment), they have a long, long way to go. 

3) Material waste —
    This is a subject that has come up time and again in ecoLogue–even in its short life. The fact is, theatrical production revolves around a process of creation and subsequent destruction. So much effort is devoted to imagining, designing, and building theatrical scenery–and yet, very little (or so it would seem) goes into what happens to all of it once the final curtain has fallen on a production. And even those who do consider the demise of scenery, allowing it at times to weigh heavily on their minds (see May 3, “Is Waste Inherent in Theater Production?”), can only do so much. Remember, reuse and recycle come after the all important reduce. This must become the central word in theatrical production. The problem, of course, is our fear of limiting the artistic process. No artistic director in the world wants to tell his or her creative teams to limit themselves in order that they may reduce the waste generated by their productions. But, is there a time that artists must step forward and play a role in change, rather than merely using what they may to comment on it? Reducing the use of non recyclable materials alone would go a long way in reducing a theater’s waste. Conceiving of a way to reuse and store (safely–perhaps off site) scenery would be another.

4) Toxic materials —
    Just have a look at the ecoLogue entry from April 27 up there (“Monona Rossol and the toxic, unsafe theater we create”), and you may begin to understand the often toxic stuff that we theater artists work with on a regular basis. Actually, that entry doesn’t really go into detail, but suffice it to consider these fields: scenic carpentry (welding, working with foam of all sorts, adhesives, stains, finishes, et cetera), props (ditto), and costumes (including wigs, makeup, millinery, crafts and dye–all using a myriad of toxic chemicals). Of course, there are laws and regulations in place that dictate the safe use of these materials, as well as their proper disposal, but guess what? According to Monona Rossol of Arts, Crafts & Theater Safety (ACTS), most theaters don’t abide the law. As has been written here before, simply acting in accordance with OSHA and EPA regulations would help reduce harm to both the environment and theater artists themselves.

There are, to be sure, other areas that will affect the environment and human health in theatrical production, but I think the four listed above are the worst offenders.