Monthly Archives: September 2009

Utah Theatre Disaster Creates Geothermal Potential

Reprinted from The Salt Lake Tribune: “Turning a Crisis into Opportunity” by John Keahay, September 20, 2009

Late last year, a distraught Michael Ballam walked into a board meeting, plopped into his chair and announced, “I have some bad news.”

The founder and general director of the Utah Festival Opera had just come from the historic Utah Theatre — a shuttered movie house that was being converted into a production venue for the northern Utah-based company. Crews, attempting to dig 15 feet down from the orchestra pit tucked beneath the newly expanded stage, had just hit groundwater at 12 feet.

A geyser was bubbling up, filling the pit at about 20 gallons per minute and seemingly dooming the $3.5 million-$4 million renovation.

In the long run, the watery problem didn’t kill the project, But the solution added $500,000 to the price tag, which along with a plummeting economy that was stifling fundraising efforts, forced the cancellation of the 2009 summer schedule of shows planned for the venue.

“In some ways it was a blessing,” said Ballam. The half-million-dollar fix helped designers create a larger, deeper space for the mechanical innards of a complex organ system. This is seen as a distinctive feature of the restored theater that eventually will feature opera, plays, recitals and movies, including silent films.

And the unwelcome water started arts officials thinking about an environmentally pleasing, cost-saving solution for heating and cooling the theater — geothermal energy instead of natural gas.

But first, workers had to solve the immediate problem of the orchestra pit flood. They installed a rubber membrane — below water level — at 15 feet down and then poured 4 feet of concrete to make a “boat” that essentially floats. This keeps the space dry, and it allowed the organ’s inner workings to be installed. The organ console will sit several feet away on an automatic lift in the orchestra pit. During productions, it can be raised and lowered as needed. In addition, a grand piano can be moved onto the lift for the same purpose.

“It’s like the Radio City Music Hall [in New York City], except there the organ comes in and out of the wall,” said Ballam.

As it turned out, the water was the least of the Utah Theatre’s problems. The nation’s economic crisis and its effect on stock portfolios has dulled contributors’ enthusiasm and cut the Utah Festival Opera market-based endowment in half. This has put the renovation on hold, and it could take a few more years before the theater once again comes alive.

“The spirt’s willing, but the bank account’s weak,” said Richard Anderson, Festival Opera’s board vice chairman.

Stalled plans for the theater are ambitious. It is much smaller, at 350 seats, than the main Utah Festival Opera venue, the 1,140-seat Ellen Eccles Theatre on Logan’s Main Street. Ballam said the theater is a perfect facility for launching smaller-scale operas — think intimate Mozart works versus mammoth productions, such as Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida.”

If additional cash is found, “we could open it on a limited basis next season by showing films,” Ballam said. “That would take $1 million. Another million, and we can finish the lobby.” Still another million would buy the inner workings of a backstage “fly” system that raises and lowers scenery. Ultimately, the balcony could be expanded, raising the number of seats to 500.

“We’ll do it in phases,” the general director said. Meanwhile, the Utah Opera Festival, despite hard financial times, plans a full 2010 summer season of five operas and musicals around the corner in the Eccles Theatre, plus all of the associated educational activities. The festival staged 130 events during the 2009 summer season — a tradition that goes back to its inception in 1993.

During the past summer, the festival sold 21,000 tickets to five shows over four-and-a-half weeks, generating $870,000 of its $2.3 million operating budget. The balance is raised through philanthropy.

The Utah Theatre’s season-ending groundwater issue, while a minor disaster, has led the opera company to what could eventually become a long-term, cash-saving alternative. If the water pressure was powerful enough to create a bubbling geyser in the orchestra pit, then something must be driving it.

In this case, an aquifer, fed by subterranean runoff from the mountains to the east, sits another 200 feet below, exerting its pressure upward.

After Ballam walked into the board meeting to deliver his bad news, vice chairman Anderson was struck by a thought. Could the deep aquifer be tapped and, using geothermal technology, could the resulting green energy be used to heat and cool the Utah Theatre?

The aquifer’s water probably is a consistent 50 to 55 degrees, summer or winter.

Anderson uses that technology to heat and cool his home 10 miles south of Logan. His small system takes water from a free-flowing spring, runs its through a heat exchanger and, can manage his indoor climate at a comfortable level whether the temperature outside is 20 below zero or 100 degrees above.

To do the same for the Utah Theatre would require the drilling of two wells adjacent to the building in downtown Logan — one for extracting naturally heated water from the aquifer, another to return it into the subterranean cavity. A commercial heat exchanger would transfer heat from the aquifer water to a liquid within the exchanger, and that would be used to provide heat or cool the theater.

“Of course, you need electricity to run a compressor and the pumps to move the water around,” said Anderson, “but you don’t need electricity or natural gas to heat or cool the theater. There would be no flame [from a pilot light] in the building; no carbon-monoxide detector is necessary.”

The cost would be $10,000 for each of the two wells, $50,000-$75,000 for the compressor and heat-exchange system — no more than for a conventional system, said festival Managing Director Gary Griffin.

Ballam, a world-class opera singer who performs in many Utah Festival productions, loves the geothermal idea beyond its long-term cost- and energy-saving benefits.

“It’s not noisy,” he said. “As an opera singer on stage, you notice when the [traditional furnace] system turns on. It can be distracting.”

Go to the Green Theater Initiative

Did #pm2un Tweet make Gordon to go to Copenhagen?

I was blogging last week in response to green.tv’s suggestion that there were too many climate campaigns. My view was that it wasn’t that there were too many, but that maybe they weren’t reaching the right people.

Last week the website BeThatChange.com were pushing hard on a campaign on Twitter,#pm2un, trying to persuade Gordon Brown to commit to go to the COP15 Climate Conference in Copenhagen. At the time this seemed like a great example of a well-targeted campaign.

Though it’s not that unusual for leaders not to commit to attending this sort of conference until the last moment, BeThatChange had cleverly spotted an opportunity there. It looks rubbish for Brown to be claiming to be leading the agenda at Copenhagen when he’s not even committed to going himself. A couple of days after BeThatChange cranked up the heat with their #pm2un campaign, @EdMilibandMP tweeted a survey on his Ed’s Pledge site, asking visitors what their priorities for Copenhagen were. Miliband offered the following options to chose from:

1) the Prime Minister attending Copenhagen to help deliver a deal

2) doing more to provide home insulation in the UK

3) more government support to create green jobs

Whatever you think about the yeas and nays of deliberative democracy, when I looked on Friday, “the Prime Minster attending Copenhagen to help deliver a deal” had received 93% of the vote. How much of that was due to the BeThatChange.com campaign is hard to calculate, but I suspect that the question was even on Miliband’s poll suggests that the original #pm2un campaign was bang on.

If anything, I suppose it’s possible the Labour Party saw how potentially embarrassing such a campaign could be if it gained much more momentum, and instead turned it to their advantage. Either way the news came through late last night, less than 48 hours before BeThatChange’s next #pm2un twitterstorm:

Gordon Brown urges world leaders to attend climate change talk

Whatever did happen behind closed doors, it was nice work all round, really.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

(Park)ing Day

parkingday

Back in the spring I met John Bela of Rebar, one of the design team who thought up (Park)ing Day five years ago. The idea of turning parking spaces into parks for a day continues to spread. In my home town of Brighton, some artists have been creating the city’s first (Park)ing Daythere.  This [picture above] is one being set up just a couple of hours ago by design consultants IDEO in Chicago.

It’s interesting this idea came from San Francisco, a city whose culture has been deeply influenced by the ideals that underpin the web. Create something good. Give it away. Measure its success by how far it spread, not by the money you make from it.

Photo by SimonK

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EcoArtTech – Ecology, Art, and Technology

WILD: The Conditions of Possibility for the Experience of Nature in the Everyday, 2009

Free Downloadable PDF at the link below.

This work is made possible in part by generous contributions from K2 Family Foundation, SolarOne Green Energy, Arts & Education Center, Colgate University and the Paul A. Garrison Faculty Research Fellowship, the Pine Lake Environmental Campus of Hartwick College, and a Turbulence Net Art Comission.

EcoArtTech | Ecology, Art, and Technology | PDFs.

Are there too many climate campaigns?

Just as we’ve been publishing our ever expanding lists of campaigns in the run up to COP15, and as we’re on the verge of launching our own one, Arts for COP15, Green.tv asks the question “Are there too many climate campaigns?” [Their blog is currently down today… so you’ll have to take my word for it]. Have we become “bored” with the issue of climate change because of campaign overload?

For climate campaigners the real frustration is the slowness of change. The public still seem reluctant to clamour at politicians in the way we’d like them to. Could this be because they are just getting too many messages? That list of sixteen actions for COP15 is by no means exhaustive. Is this a case of too much information?

I don’t think so. Three reasons:

1) For a start, the nature of social media means that this fragmentation is going to happen, whether we like it or not. For better or worse, there will no longer be a single source of authority on any political discussion like this. On the plus side, climate campaigners like Franny Armstrong have shown how incredibly effective social media are for spreading a message.

2) Secondly, though the campaigns are diverse,  climate NGOs are showing a great deal of resourcefulness. Most of the campaigns listed below are actually partnerships between several campaigns – Greenpeace, WWF, Oxfam, Age of Stupid et al. Charities usually have a parochial tendency to defend their own turf with one eye on their own future fundraising – but in this case there is a lot of sharing going on.

3) So what’s the problem? With all this heat being created why aren’t more poeple taking action? Perhaps in this case we’re blaming the medium, not the message.  Most campaigns on energy and climate do not interest the mass of the people worldwide. The avaaz.org map of actions for Monday 21 September is worth looking at. Why is there a huge disparity between the numbers of actions being taken in different countries? We have to think hard about what messages appeal to the mass of people who are more aspirational than ourselves. (That’s not to say they need to be directly aspirational messages; the most effective political campaigns in recent times have usually been based on fear.)

We are in a research period, still looking for the right message. We have not found it yet. Now is not the time to start cutting down on the multiplicity of voices. Eventually one of us is going to get the right campaign, the killer one, the one that convinces more than just our friends.

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SCRAP CASTLES | SUSTAINABLE BEACH ART EVENT

Emerging Green Builders – Los Angeles
EGB-LA Committee
Upcoming Opportunities for Member Participation

SCRAP CASTLES | SUSTAINABLE BEACH ART EVENT
Saturday, September 26, 2009 | 9am
Lifeguard Tower 4 | In front of 415 Pacific Coast Hwy, Santa Monica, CA
Near Annenberg Community Beach House | Parking south of 415 PCH

Event Description | Designers and builders are encouraged to come out and enjoy the morning on the beach with fellow Emerging Green Builders (EGB). We will design and create large and small scale scrap castles comprised of sand and your scrap materials. This is a great time to meet the group, learn about upcoming events, and of how you can become involved. Please review the Beach Rules included below.

What You Bring | Used scrap materials such as: window frames (no glass), doors, small furniture, lumber, ply, (no nails) and any decorative item that you can haul out to the beach. Sand castle tools such as: buckets, shovels and maybe a ladder. Bring a friend, co-worker, or partner.

Beach Rules | Normal beach restrictions will apply: No smoking, no fires or fireworks, no tents or temporary enclosures, lifeguards’ directions must be obeyed, etc. For more on Beach Rules, see http://www01.smgov.net/osm/beachrules.htm. Be sensible when choosing scrap to bring to the beach. If you are unsure about what you may bring or are looking for more information about this event, you may contact Paul at pjramirez@gmx.com

*Note | Tours of the Annenberg Community Beach House are at 11am, 1pm and 3pm for more information contact Paul at pjramirez@gmx.com

About EGB-LA
EGB-LA, a committee of the USGBC-LA Chapter provides emerging green builders, primarily young professionals and students, a network from which to gain knowledge and become involved in the green building community, established by the USGBC-LA.

Go to EcoLOGIC LA

Monday: Global climate wake up call

The Avaaz.org/tcktcktck flash mob campaign mentioned below takes place on Monday between 12:15PM – 12:30PM. It’s not too late to add your own events to the list. Within two weeks since the idea first surfaced, there are now over 350 events taking place in 52 countries – though taking a look at the ones in London, some groups seem to have interpreted the brief pretty loosely. It’ll be interesting to see how this one plays out. Can social media demonstrate their effectiveness with this issue? I’m going to try and make it along to the one at Westminster if I can escape the desk…

Take a look at the site and find an action near you.

Meanwhile, we’ve created a site called Arts for COP15 which will be going live in the next few days. This site is still being worked on, and please note, the url you’re redirected to isn’t the one the site will have when it officially goes live, but you can still join the site, log in and upload information about any COP15 arts related events.

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Clare Patey | Feast on the bridge

The artist-inspired Feast has become a remarkable part of London’s calendar, bringing together Londoners to produce food for a giant community meal. For the last two years it’s culminated in a giant Feast on the bridge on Southwark Bridge. Created by artist Clare Patey and colleagues, Feast on the bridge took part last weekend – another extraordinary example of arts transformational involvement in horticulture and community that I’ve written about earlier here, here and here.

feast3

feast4

feast

RSA Arts & Ecology is teaming up with the RSA’s Connected Communities project to create a new garden based scheme in New Cross. More of that soon.

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ECOVENUE: London’s Green Theatre Plan, One Year Later

Reprinted from PRNewswire: “Theatres Trust Announces ECOVENUE Green Theatre Project for London” September 9, 2009

On 14 September 2009 at Plasa 09 The Theatres Trust will announce a new three year programme to provide specialist theatre environmental advice and undertake free DEC assessments with 48 small scale theatres in London.

One year on from the launch of the Mayor of London’s ‘Green Theatre: Taking Action on Climate Change‘ initiative at Plasa 08, The Theatres Trust will announce it is to receive GBP450,000 over the next three years from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in London to deliver the ECOVENUE advisory programme.

Mhora Samuel, Director of The Theatres Trust said “When the Mayor of London’s Green Theatre Plan was launched last year to help theatres in London achieve reductions in carbon emissions by 60% by 2025, commercial and subsidised theatres in London were quick to sign up. We recognised that smaller theatres with less resources would find it harder to participate, and so made an application for funding to the LDA at the beginning of 2009 to help address the gap. I’m delighted that we can announce the ERDF award at Plasa 09 and help more London theatres to address environmental issues associated with climate change and reduce their energy use.”

The ECOVENUE project provides each participating theatre with a free theatre-specific Environmental Audit, and free Display Energy Certificates in 2010 and 2011. A DEC is a publicly displayed certificate that informs the public about the energy use of a building. This free environmental improvement advice will be delivered by a new Theatre Building Services Adviser to be employed by the Trust.

The Trust will be inviting 48 theatres to apply to participate in the project, which will run until spring 2012. Application details will be advertised over the following months.

Pictures accompanying this release are available through the PA Photowire. They can be downloaded from http://www.pa-mediapoint.press.net or viewed at http://www.mediapoint.press.net or http://www.prnewswire.co.uk.

Go to the Green Theater Initiative