Arcola

Arcola Meets ‘This is Rubbish’

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Reprinted from http://www.thisisrubbish.org.uk/?p=357

This is Rubbish are very pleased and excited to be collaborating with The Arcola Theatre and Pangolin’s Ark. On Sunday the 11th April The Arcola Theatre, This is Rubbish and Pangolin’s Ark will host a day of sustainable food themed talks, activities and workshops, followed by a fine food waste and sustainably sourced feast.

Buy tickets for the feast here

We are currently scheduling the workshops and a detailed program of the day will be released soon. Tickets for the feast will also be on sale in the very near future. Watch this space!

If you fancy getting involved with a crew chopathon and baking session, we’re looking for volunteers to help prepare and cook the food on the Saturday, and volunteers to help prepare and serve the food during the evening event on Sunday. The soil service (waitresses and waiters) will be dressed up as soil particles, salad and vegetables and service will be very interactive and incredibly earthy!

Give us a shout if you are interested on helping out on day that is set to be super soily and sustainably wonderful.

info@thisisrubbish.org.uk

poppy@pangolins-ark.co.uk

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Matt Black of Ninja Tune from Copenhagen

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Addressing the launch of Future Arcola at City Hall London from Copenhagen, Matt Black, one half of acclaimed DJ duo Coldcut and co-counder of record label Ninja Tune, speaks of his hopes for a productive outcome from the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference…

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoKHyfRMq88

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Arcola Theatre Launches New Eco-Theatre Plans

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PRESS RELEASE:

At London’s City Tuesday, representatives from Arcola Theatre and sustainable design innovators Arup present plans for the creation of a new eco-theatre in Dalston, East London.

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, said, “As world leaders gather in Copenhagen, Arcola Theatre is at the forefront of how London’s arts organisations can champion the environment. We have to take robust yet practical steps to make our city more energy efficient. This has the added benefit of playing a pivotal role in the wider redevelopment of this part of the city, making the urban realm more pleasant. Three cheers for Arcola for raising the bar.”

Developed though a feasibility study funded by London Development Agency, the project will be the UK’s first major arts venue to place environmental sustainability at the core of construction, programme and operations.

Mehmet Egen, Artistic Director and founder of Arcola Theatre said: “Our new building will include an exquisite 350 seat theatre allowing us to create an even greater and more diverse programme, building on our past nine years of success.”

Dr Ben Todd, Executive Director of Arcola Theatre, said: “Wrapped around the main stage will be dynamic spaces to accommodate our ever-growing environmental sustainability and community engagement programmes. Our aim is to create a place Da Vinci might call home where creative people across multiple disciplines drive innovation for a sustainable and equitable future.”

Global engineering and design consultancy Arup has been appointed to provide theatre and acoustical consultancy services; whilst Arup Associates, Arup’s multidisciplinary design studio, will provide an integrated architecture and engineering design. Arup’s iconic projects include the Sydney Opera House, and the Birds Nest and Water Cube stadiums for the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

Neill Woodger, director of Arup’s theatre consulting and acoustics business said: “Our task is to conceive a theatre that exemplifies sustainability. It must provide the highest levels of artistic experience, whilst being affordable to build and economical to operate. It must contribute positively to the environment and local community and lead the way in promoting the shift to more ecological lifestyles. This is the first public venue to use a sustainability framework to define the brief and conceptual design, and it will set a new level of performance in theatre design.”

The expanded Arcola Theatre will include:

  • A main house theatre seating 350 (500 standing), suitable for mid-scale theatre and opera productions
  • 150 and 80 seat black-box studio theatres, similar to those Arcola already run
  • An extensive foyer, spilling out on to the public realm, with bar/café/restaurant and informal meeting spaces
  • Incubator units for scientists and engineers developing sustainable technologies
  • A Bike Hub with storage and change facilities, close to public transport nodes
  • Public garden and growing spaces

The new Arcola Theatre will be located at the heart of Dalston close to the new Dalston Square development and a new East London Line station. The project is part of a wider London Development Agency (LDA) funded project Making Space in Dalston. This exemplary project, led by the LDA’s Design for London team, is bringing together diverse stakeholders to choose and deliver strategic improvements in public realm resources across Dalston.

Cllr Guy Nicholson, Hackney Council Cabinet Member for Regeneration and the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, said: “Hackney Council is committed to supporting Arcola’s ambition to create an innovative new eco-theatre; ensuring that Arcola continues to contribute to the cultural excitement that is Dalston.”

Project partners include:

  • Integrated Design (architecture and engineering) – Arup Associates
  • Theatre and Acoustical Consultants – Arup
  • Sustainability Consultants – Juhi Shareef Associates
  • Bar/cafe/restaurant Consultants – Ignite Hospitality Consultants
  • Project Management – Mouchel
  • Quantity Surveyors – William G Dick
  • Funders – Design for London & London Development Agency
  • Host – London Borough Hackney

Project Director, Dr Ben Todd of Arcola Theatre is one of the 2009 London Leaders for sustainability and the launch event is supported by the London Sustainable Development Commission.

PRESS RELEASE ENDS

More details and hi-resolution images: www.futurearcola.com/press

NOTES TO EDITORS:

Arcola Theatre was founded in 2000 by its present Artistic Director Mehmet Ergen and Executive Producer Leyla Nazli. From humble origins Arcola has grown to become an important London and UK venue serving both as receiving house and producer of its own critically acclaimed work. Arcola has strong links with the local community, delivering an extensive programme of participatory arts for all ages. Since 2007 Arcola has been working with local and international partners across arts, science and engineering to drive mass adoption of sustainable lifestyles. Arcola Theatre is a Regularly Funded Organisation of Arts Council England. www.arcolatheatre.com

Arup is the creative force behind many of the world’s prominent building, infrastructure and industrial projects. Founded in 1946 with an enduring set of values, Arup’s unique trust ownership fosters a distinctive culture, an intellectual independence and encourages truly collaborative working. www.arup.com

Arup Associates is the integrated design studio of the multinational consulting engineering group Arup. Started by Sir Ove Arup more than four decades ago to develop his concept of total architecture, Arup Associates offer a radical alternative to conventional architectural practice, creating pioneering holistic design that is focused on people. The studio practices multidisciplinary design where engineers and architects work side by side in embedded teams in a single practice. Teamwork is at the core of our structure. www.arupassociates.com

Mouchel is a consulting and business services group that builds great relationships with clients in the public sector and regulated industry to make a difference to customers and communities. Operations include highways, water, rail, property, housing, education, energy, management consultancy and ‘business process outsourcing’ in a wide range of disciplines. Mouchel has more than 11,000 employees, 123 offices in the UK and an audited turnover of £740.6 million. Mouchel was awarded ‘Top 20 Best Big Companies to Work For’ status in March 2008 in the annual Sunday Times rankings. In March 2008 it also achieved Two Star accreditation from awarding body Best Companies for an outstanding level of employee engagement across the company. www.mouchel.com

Juhi Shareef Associates (JSA) is a consultancy specialising in sustainability for events and the creative industries. JSA has a particular focus on the role of cultural institutions in sustainable development and has recently returned from the COP 15- related Culture Futures event, working on engaging the cultural sector in moving towards an ecological age by 2050. www.juhishareef.com

Ignite Hospitality Consultants is a pioneering Hackney-based agency, providing marketing, strategy, branding, design and concept development for hotels, restaurants and bars in the UK and internationally. A collective of consultants under one roof provide support to Start-Up or Grown-Up hospitality operators in driving sales, growth and improving efficiency. www.ignitehospitality.com

William G Dick Partnership LLP is an Chartered Quantity Surveying practice. Established for over 25 years, the practice prides itself in providing clients with an enthusiastic and pro-active service. www.williamgdick.co.uk

London Borough of Hackney is working with Transport for London, the London Development Agency and local partners in the regeneration of Dalston. Work is centred on Dalston Square – a new public square bordered by a new East London Line Overground station, new shops, new homes and a new library and public archive. Across Dalston a programme of public realm improvements will integrate new developments with the existing town centre, and enhance the cultural mix. www.hackney.gov.uk

London Development Agency (LDA) works to improve the quality of life for all Londoners – investing in jobs, skills and growth. In Dalston, the LDA has worked with the London Borough of Hackney, Transport for London, architects and developers to capitalise on the East London Line extension. The new housing developments around Dalston Junction will create a new public square and other facilities. The London Development Agency – through the Making Space in Dalston project led by its Design for London team – will invest a further £750,000 in improving the wider public realm in Dalston; this includes the feasibility study for Arcola’s future theatre. www.lda.gov.uk

London Sustainable Development Commission was established in 2002 to advise the Mayor of London on making London a benchmark for sustainable cities. The Commission is made up of a individual experts from the economic, social, environmental and London governance sectors. The Commission’s London Leaders programme brings together London’s leading lights in sustainability, to deliver change, and inspire others to do the same. www.londonsdc.org

Arts Council England works to get great art to everyone by championing, developing and investing in artistic experiences that enrich people’s lives. As the national development agency for the arts, we support a range of artistic activities from theatre to music, literature to dance, photography to digital art, and carnival to crafts. Great art inspires us, brings us together and teaches us about ourselves, and the world around us. In short, it makes life better. Between 2008 and 2011, we will invest £1.3 billion of public money from government and a further £0.3 billion from the National Lottery to create these experiences for as many people as possible across the country. www.artscouncil.org.uk

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Arcola’s Winning Streak

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Arcola Recognized as Green Community Hero

On Nov. 25, Arcola proudly accepted the award of Most Innovative Project at the Green Communities conference in Liverpool. Green Communities is an intiative from the Energy Saving Trust that supports, facilitates and promotes community based energy projects. They are a great resource for any group interested in pursuing sustainability.
For more information on the awards click here .
If you have a community group and would like to join Green Communities, sign up here.

Arcola Wins Archant London Environmental Award 2009

Rachel Carless, Sustainability Projects Manager and Lisa Woynarski, Sustainability Intern, accept award from Penney Poyzer.

Arcola Theatre was awarded Best Environmental Business of the Year (Small to Medium) at this year’s Archant London Environmental awards. The awards ceremony, held on 20th November, was hosted by TV presenter, Penney Poyzer (of BBC’s “No Waste like Home”).  Boris Johnson, Mayor of London praised the awards in a statement read in his absence, saying “We have to take bold steps to improve our environment and combat climate change, so I urge you all to continue with your exceptional endeavours so we can really make a difference.”
Click here to find out more about the awards and the other winners.
You can also read the Hackney Gazette article here.

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Video Chat in Artistic Endeavors

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skype-iconIt goes without saying that the travel associated with our artist endeavors is not the most sustainable. I’ve been to so many conferences this last year, mostly traveling by plane. Next week I’m off to Europe where I’ll be staying in Copenhagen for COP15 and Wooloo.org‘s New Life Festival, but I’m also headed to London for the Future Arcola Launch and, it’s looking like Prague as well, to check in with a project for the next PQ in June of 2011.

I personally love traveling. I feel guilty, yes, but I love going places. I also feel there is no substitute for in-person discussions. The spontaneity and intimacy of direct contact is important and this is easiest to accommodate face-to-face and in the flesh. And, even when it’s not about having a one-on-one, there is also that just showing up most of the time is a big deal. I maintain that our “success” with the CSPA is due to persistence and “showing up”.

Two weeks ago, I was in Orlando for LDI for a full day of Green Sessions for the show technology crowd put together by Bob Usdin and Annie Jacobs from Showman Fabricators. There I had the chance to meet Bryan Raven of White Light in the UK again. We had been on a roundtable panel at the Theatre Materials/Material Theatre conference at the Central School of Speech and Drama‘s Center for Excellence in Theatre Training in April of 2008. That previous conference was also when I was able to meet, and have a drink with, Ben Todd from Arcola. Ben, who was not able to come to Orlando, and was instead in Stockholm (maybe you saw his post early this week) , was present via a video chat to talk about Future Arcola.

With the ubiquity of broadband connections, more and more people seem to be relying on video conference/chat technology to get other busy, high profile, greener guests to be able to be in two spaces at the same time. And, as it tends to shake out, the resident technophile/ show technologist, I get the pleasure of making a lot of them work.

Google_Talk_icon_by_hungery5Last night, at California Institute of the Arts I set up a video chat audition for guest artists that will be in residency at REDCAT, CalArt’s downtown LA space. The Artists of Invasion from the Chicken Planet, are based in New York and, though of no sustainable intention, weren’t going to fly out to audition some of our actors to use in their residency for two hours.

The day before, we had tested the connection. We used the same computer with the same software on the same network (hardwired into the wall) that we’d use the next day. We tried Skype, which was too choppy, garbled and had a couple seconds delay that made it less than ideal. We then switched to iChat with AOL Instant Messenger accounts and after realizing another computer being connected was preventing a decent video link, it proved the smoothest and most immediate.

So last night, when we moved the computer into the room that we would be conducting the auditions in, we configured the machine the same way, but were not able to make a connection on iChat. Skype had the same issues. At the prompting of a student director who was assisting, we tried Gtalk Video chat. It ended up working immediately and with excellent quality.

Earlier in the year, at Earth Matters on Stage (EMOS), when Moe Beitiks had tried to link up Brent Bucknum to present his bio-remidative work via video chat, we tried ooVoo, which we gave up on in favor of iChat again. We had almost just given up, but I only thought to use iChar from the decent chats I had experienced with my brother-in-law who was living in Edinburgh at the time. Also at EMOS we had a video conference in the University of Oregon library with a panel in London arranged by the Ashden Directory, which used their dedicated video conferencing package.

aim_logo_2.jpgIn both situations the video wasn’t great, but we could sort of communicate. The Ashden Session involved each end of the discussion/video conference going into another room to watch a video and then coming back to discuss together. But there was lag and the video wasn’t particularly clear. The Brent Bucknam session was not bad, but very one-way. For Green Day at LDI, the audio was great, but in one session, with Seema Sueeko from Mo’olelo Performing Arts, the video was minutes behind the audio connection.

Having now had extensive experience with video conferencing in less than ideal situations, I do long for the day when we’ll be able to turn on whatever client we’re using to video chat and it works smoothly and immediately, let alone with high resolution. But, that day isn’t particularly close. There are a lot of variables in the way of making that happen. Network connections, equipment, client servers, client and local network traffic, sunspots, radio waves and the phases of the moon. Even when we tried to eliminate as many of those variables in Eugene as possible, it still didn’t work ideally. Or, what was ideally was not enough to convince.

Will our broadband video connections be able to save us the footprint of air travel for conferences and internationally collaborative meetings of the mind? Not yet. There might be some expensive corporate system out there, but we lowly green artists aren’t going to hold our breath waiting for that. Oprah’s skype seems to work fine, but I’ve never had such luck, so I leave that package just to replace my need for international phone calls.

I’d still rather sit and talk to you, especially when we aren’t both staring at our monitors in our Pajamas.

Also yesterday, Enci Box of Rebel Without a Car Productions came to speak to my and Leslie Tamaribuchi’s class, Sustainability Seminar. She can to talk about producing a short film as sustainably as possible. This included not using cars and transporting everything by bike with the help of the LA Greensters (green teamsters). She made the trip from East Hollywood, in the center of Los Angeles, to the edge of the county, where CalArts resides in Valencia, without a car. She came up on a Metrolink commuter train, biking from the station to campus. She and I had worked out the options for getting there and she had the time to dedicate to coming up. Also, she was lucky to had met a guy who regularly made that journey to visit his girlfriend at CalArts and could relay the benefit of his experience. She then went back home, via bike. all roughly 30 miles of the trip. Coming up to CalArts, it took 2 hours. Returning was supposedly going to be one and a half hours. All for a 45 minute presentation.

I suppose we could have had her “skype” in (even if we don’t typically end up on skype), but having her there in-person was a much greater thrill and much more in the moment for the students and for her. Instead it took dedication to not leaving a footprint, and finding alternatives to get to the class. I’m very much indebted to Enci for making the journey, which some might say was epic, to present for a fraction of that travel time. But, I think it far surpassed our alternatives.

Bob Usdin of Showman Fabricators Announces First LDI Green Awards

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Bob Usdin of Showman Fabricators, who organized LDI Green Day and the awards for best green product and best green production at this last year’s show in Orlando, is seen here announcing the recipients of those awards.

As a judge for the awards I had the opportunity to get into some great conversations about the products that were are weren’t on the show floor the weekend before Thanksgiving. I also got to ask questions about products that WEREN’T on the show floor.

We’ll be posting more from our LDI wrap-up before Miranda and I are off to Copenhagen to cover the arts festivities around COP15, primarily New Life Copenhagen by wooloo.org,  and maybe get over to Arcola for the launch of their new facilities.

If you need to catch up on all of the greening of LDI here are some links for you to check out:

https://www.sustainablepractice.org/2009/11/19/2009-green-day-ldi

https://www.sustainablepractice.org/2009/10/28/ldi-and-sustainability-part-i

https://www.sustainablepractice.org/2009/10/26/how-green-is-green-no-orangutans-were-harmed-in-the-making-of-this-scenery-aug-2008

https://www.sustainablepractice.org/2009/09/28/green-awards-at-ldi

Future Arcola kicks off!

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Monday 16 November 2009 was a date to remember : the first official kick-off meeting for the Future Arcola theatre was held, appropriately, in the current Arcola bar!

After two years of meetings and relationship building on all fronts, the show is finally on the road… and now we have three weeks to present our plans for taking the project to RIBA stage B, i.e. feasibility design stage. A presentation on Future Arcola is going to be made at City Hall on December 15th.

I am working with fellow Sustainability Consultant Mariane Jang, and Arcola’s Sustainability  Projects Manager Rachel Carless, to develop a robust Sustainability Appraisal Framework (SAF) that will provide the performance framework for managing the sustainability of the project.

As part of the SAF we will:

  • Crystallise the sustainability vision for Future Arcola
  • Set sustainability objectives (covering environment and natural resource issues, social responsibility and economic viability and regeneration)
  • Derive robust key performance indicators to measure sustainability performance against objectives
  • Compare different scoring mechanisms (LEED, BREEAM etc) as well as the WWF One Planet Living principles and reviewing their relevance for Future Arcola
  • Undertake stakeholder engagement with the Arcola team, Mouchel (project management), Arup Associates (architecture), Arup (theatre consulting, structural engineering), Hackney Borough Council, the London Development Agency (LDA), BioRegional and beyond

Arcola has proved itself to be a groundbreaking theatre, not only showcasing world-class productions but also leading the way in engaging with the public through the Arcola Energy incubator, Arcola Youth & Community programmes and Green Sundays. The next step in the sustainability story will be to set some challenging targets so that Future Arcola can realistically hope to be the most sustainable theatre in the world.

Congratulations to Leyla, Mehmet and Ben for all their hard work to get us to the starting blocks.

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