Stage lighting has been characterised as an intractable problem for sustainability in theatre. Attention has been focused on reducing loads by switching to other sources, even as many high-efficiency technologies remain prohibitively expensive. This has worried lighting designers who rely on tungsten in their work, fearing that addressing energy efficiency may affect the work on-stage.
Findings from the first season-long analysis of stage lighting energy use suggest that these fears are unfounded.
We’ll review the findings and relevant critical issues.
Who should attend?
Open to all: especially lighting designers, technicians, facilities managers.
Seminars about sustainability and the arts often, usefully but repeatedly, focus on energy use and material consumption. A public conversation at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, ‘What’s the Big Idea?’, organised by Creative Carbon Scotland and Festivals Edinburgh, nodded to the material imperatives – the plastic cups – then shifted the discussion to the processes of making theatre that don’t fit with the accountancy of sustainability, to the unintended consequences of sustainable decisions, and to the need for sharing more technologies more widely.
The conversation opened with provocations from Erica Whyman, Artistic Director of Northern Stage, and Anthony Alderson, Director of the Pleasance Theatre Trust, chaired by Harry Giles, Environment Officer of Festival Edinburgh, and hosted by Ben Twist of Creative Carbon Scotland.
A phrase from Whyman recurred throughout the discussion. She quoted theatre director Joan Littlewood speaking about how to make theatre, and how to challenge the hierarchies in power: ‘We must get lost if we are to make a new route.’
Whyman compared ‘getting lost’ to the need in theatre production for not adhering to absolute objectives, whether financial, material or ideological. The question, for Whyman, is not why more artists don’t make work about climate change. Artists make the work they want to make; they are not essayists or teachers. Rather, artists get lost, and create something that surprises.<
The surprises, or unintended consequences of working within financial constraints have meant theatres having to work with different economic models. Whyman’s example was Northern Stage’s decision to group together artists, makers and staff in accommodation in Edinburgh for their series of productions at St. Stephen’s church. Inadvertently, they created a commune, a creative and powerful way of working together as a team. These aspects of consensus and democracy are forgotten, according to Whyman, in the accountancy of sustainability and in the apocalyptic narratives of climate change.
Alderton spoke of the need to look for the wider questions behind the requests for the artistic community to recycle or use less energy. Every company working with the Pleasance plants a tree in Scotland. This is a trade. Theatres are places of trade, artistically and materially, and need to share their technologies, be less possessive about their productions and share ideas.
‘Getting lost’ figured in many of the audience’s questions. If theatre productions set the conditions for the audience to get lost in finding a new route, and organisations set the conditions for productions, how do directors and curators more immediately set the conditions for artists to ‘get lost’ in creating new work about sustainability or the climate? Why might artists not be willing to engage with, get lost, in the scientific and the political aspects of climate change? How can artists be encouraged to hold contradictory ideas in tension in creative ways, like the tension between where we are now, and where we could be heading?
Too, there were questions about the relation between theatre and the public; about whether theatre should teach; about audiences’ carbon footprints and whether the arts world had responsibility for audiences' travel.
The slight change of perspective connected the achievement of carbon reduction figures to the relations and effects between material use and communal, artistic and intellectual change – a viable new route.
“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK†(2020 Network)
ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.
The Green Deal: a new revolution in energy efficiency
As part of its sustainability, Arcola Theatre continuously strives to improve its energy efficiency. In this post, we take a closer look at the Green Deal initiative being set up by the government to increase energy efficient efforts in the UK.
What is it?
The Green Deal is a new government initiative, which is intended to revolutionise the energy efficiency of British properties. It is anticipated the Green Deal will be launched in autumn 2012.
Through the Green Deal, many households and businesses can improve their energy efficiency and reduce their fuel bills through better insulation and installing energy efficient boilers. The Deal is hailed as an innovative financing mechanism which allows consumers to pay back through their energy bills. Thus, the crucial aspect is that there are no upfront costs whatsoever. Therefore, consumers can see the Green Deal charge alongside the reductions in energy use which generate savings on their bill. It also means that if they move out and cease to be the bill-payer at that property, the financial obligation doesnt move with them but moves to the next bill payer: the charge is only paid whilst the benefits are enjoyed.
Why is it needed?
At a local level, the Green Deal will enable many households and businesses to improve the energy efficiency of their properties and thus generate economic gains. At a national level, the UK needs to become more energy efficient to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change.
Break down of the consumer journey
1. Advice
All businesses and households will be permitted to an energy efficiency assessment, undertaken by an accredited assessor.
2. Finance
A new finance mechanism is introduced, whereby the cost of energy efficient installations is paid back through the energy bill.
3. Installations
Accredited installer will install the measures, subject to the highest standard and to ensure that genuine energy bill and carbon savings are met.
4. Repayments and follow up
After the energy efficiency measures have been installed, a charge will be added to the energy meter at the property and will enable repayments through their energy bills for any Green Deal charges taken out. Repayment obligations belong to the occupier of the property.
(Demonstrations of Ecological Modes of Operation for Art)
by Linda Weintraub
as published in the Fall 2009 issue of the CSPA Quarterly
My goal as a curator was the earnest pursuit of environmental responsibility. I invited ten artists to boldly break the conventions of art display and production that arose during the first flush of industrial productivity. We pledged to scrutinize the innumerable aspects of creating and exhibiting artworks that are still ignored by many art professionals. We vowed not to take abundance for granted, nor tolerate waste, nor disregard the contaminating effects of our  efforts. The artists fulfilled the mandate imbedded in the title of the exhibition: “Demo Eco M.O.†(Demonstrations of Ecological Modes of Operation). The exhibition opened on July 18, 2008, at NURTUREart, a non-profit art gallery in Brooklyn.
Instead of protesting against the environmental ills that are still rampant in the art profession, we attempted to set examples of responsible behavior by conserving resources, minimizing waste and energy use, and avoiding harmful by-products. This mission determined every component of the exhibition, including the opening night refreshments. Guests ‘ate local’ by sipping filtered rainwater collected from the gallery roof and nibbling on sprouts grown on site. Â
Such unconventional materials, tools, and processes became the norm for this exhibition. Each artist assumed the role of art eco-crusader. Their fervor for environmental reform entailed minimizing art’s footprint upon the     environment while maximizing art’s mark upon the culture. Despite this challenging task, each managed to preserve humor, commitment to community, and generous offerings of good will. Together their contributions could constitute a hand-book of eco-alternatives for artists, gallerists, art supply manufacturers, and other art professionals.Â
Writing this essay relieves the one regret that lingers, regarding this project. The most ground-breaking innovations were not visible to the visitors. They occurred behind-the-scenes during the weeks preceding the opening. That is when the artists and I discussed ways to emulate the interdependencies, interconnectedness, and efficiencies that characterize vital ecosystems. Our spirited exchanges resulted in the artists reformulating their art practices. Instead of behaving as independent creators, they performed services for each other. As a result, all the pieces in the    exhibition were linked, comprising a network of connections. Consider the following
Mediums were traded among the artists. One artist’s material excess fulfilled another artist’s needs.
Tools were fabricated and shared. One artist’s ingenuity provided another artist’s means.
Exchanging these tools and mediums between the artists’ studios, and delivering artworks to the gallery were  conducted in the basket of a bicycle driven by one of the artists.
General maintenance regimes were designed into some participants’ contributions.Â
Illumination of each artwork was provided by one artists’ light sculpture.Â
Meanwhile, the network of interactions expanded to include members of the gallery staff. They participated in the material exchanges and scrupulously applied sustainable criteria to the production of the exhibition catalogue,  invitation, and wall labels. Even members of the board were enlisted to supply components of works of art. As the weeks progressed, opportunities multiplied to be a recipient and, simultaneously, to serve as a contributor. In all these ways the rigid borders that isolate artists in their studios and separate professional roles dissolved. It was  replaced with a dynamic multi channeled arena of participation that avoided redundancies, reduced consumption, eliminated waste, and conserved energy..
The contributions of the individual artists demonstrate the environmental advantages of such cooperative behaviors:Â
Carol Taylor-Kearney applied her creative and aesthetic ingenuity to fabricate art-making tools. By lending them to other artists in the exhibition she helped reduce unnecessary expenditures of material and energy associated with manufacturing, packaging, and transporting art tools.Â
Christina Massey gathered unsold and rejected works of art donated by the other artists and utilized them as her  medium. She not only avoided purchasing new art materials, she helped other artists reduce the material and energy costs associated with storing and preserving art.Â
John Day offered artists and gallery visitors alternatives to purchasing newly manufactured art mediums by focusing on the formal qualities of society’s discards. The waste stream became a site of enticing aesthetic opportunities.Â
Tamar Hirschl methodically inventoried neglected resources and documented the new contexts and uses for these items that she initiated in her artwork. Visitors were invited to help themselves to these items, providing a record of their   intentions within the gallery, and then sending the artist reports about how the material was utilized. In this manner she not only exemplified responsible engagement with material, she provided an opportunity for the visitors to join her.Â
Joyce Yamada and Joanne Ungar’s sprawling installation anticipates the particular effect the collapse of eco-system functions will have upon art. The consequence of ignoring their warning is not a pretty sight. Yamada and Ungar    assembled an array of decrepit artifacts from our misbegotten culture to convey the specific scarcities, infirmities, and dilapidations that will befall artworks and artists if we don’t shed our complacency, stifle our indulgence, and temper our greed. Viewers are jolted by an uncompromising accumulation of grisly details – giant rats gnawing hungrily on stained and torn plastic wrappings meant to protect rolled canvas, pigeons trapped in the toxic fluid leaking out of a sculpture, a protective shelter for art hastily constructed out of branches and shreds of plastic, tools crudely configured from smashed plastic bottles and metal debris, a food processing rack where a few pathetic vegetables are drying and some radishes are making a valiant attempt to complete their life cycles in plastic bottles. Joseph Cornell’s “Hotel Eden†a masterwork that addresses a longing for a lost paradise, appears aged and crackled in this work. The artists offer a a dire warning when they state, “The dream of Eden is a dangerous fallacy. Nature is neither benign nor stable. We ignore its true functioning at our peril.â€
Gunter Puller demonstrated the full cycle of disintegration and creation by dismantling multiple outdated Yellow Books and then exposing them to the sun and rain. As the pages decomposed, they transformed into a growing medium for seeds that travelled in the urban air and settled there by chance. Â
Lynn Richardson reduced the electricity used in galleries by creating a sculpture that consists of light fixtures and surveillance technology. The light from her sculpture was designed to illuminate the other works in the exhibition, but only when they are being viewed. Thus, electricity was drawn only when it was needed.
Scrapworm performed on-site narratives that revealed the recent and historic manipulation of Williamsburg ecosystems. The performance aspect of her contribution avoided the ecological costs of material fabrication, display, transport, and storage of art, while it magnified the ecological history of the ecosystem within which Nurture Art is located.Â
Anne Katrin Spiess provided a low carbon dioxide emissions alternative to motorized transportation of mediums, tools, and art works. She performed these art pick-ups and deliveries on her bicycle wearing an official uniform to draw    attention to her performance. Photographs and a video documented her contribution.Â
Patricia Tinajero established a functional reintegration between the gallery and its ecosystem by collecting the rainwater that falls upon the gallery’s roof. This free resource supplied gallery visitors with water to drink and it was directed to sprouts that were served as refreshments throughout the exhibition. She thereby severed the gallery’s  dependence on municipalities to provide water for business and life-supporting activities. Furthermore, she demonstrated that even   galleries are capable of sustainability by generating their own nourishment and beverages.Â
The spirited conviviality that developed among the participating artists originated in pragmatic environmental concerns.  It culminated on the roof of Scrapworm’s Brooklyn studio on the night before the opening. As the sun set over Manhattan, the artists and I gathered to revamp the wasteful conventions of art catalog production. We engaged in a communal book-binding party by assembling a great heap of binding materials gathered from our respective waste streams and using them to playfully assemble the pages that had been printed as sustainabily as we could afford. The covers were supplied by Patricia Tinajero who made the richely textured papers by using rainwater run-off from the Nurture Art gallery roof, and scraps from the gallery’s waste bins. Between sips of wine and bites of pizza, we braided, sewed, theaded, and      embellished several hundred catalogs. Each was unique, a testimony to a reassuring truth – respecting environmental  constraints can liberate the imagination.
The most significant aspect of “Eco Demo M.O.†was to expand the application of environmental considerations far beyond artists’ choices of medium. The artists in this exhibition demonstrated that their footprint can also be reduced during exhibiting, transporting, storing, and maintaining art. Artistic collaboration emerged as the core to achieving ecological ethics. It enables artists to activate roles within systems of exchange by sharing resources and providing support services to each other. In these ways the artists contribute to contemporary culture in a manner that far exceeds the limits of their profession. They demonstrate principles of sustainability for all human behaviors. Such art asserts that artists’ responsibility to the environment begins with a thorough review of its own professional practices. Hopefully, it exists without an ending. Such art can ripple through society as a model of sustainable behavior.  Â
Submitted by Linda Weintraub, guest curator gallery@nurtureart.org www.nurtureart.org
Moe Beitiks of Inhabitat (amongst other things) conducted an email interview with CSPA Executive Director, Ian Garrett (Me). Â You can see the whole things here:
INTERVIEW: Ian Garrett Reports on COP15 and the Arts | Inhabitat.
Some Excerpts:
INHABITAT: What were your cultural expectations for Copenhagen?
GARRETT: At this point, I don’t know what my expectations are. I’m a big fan of the idea that if you get a lot of people together in one spot, talking about a thing, things can happen. The feeling I have from the news out of here and being in the streets is that there is going to be more civilian change out of this than there will be government change. My hope is that, with this many people of divergent origins, with the efforts being made from a cultural end, that it will reify something at the grassroots level. I can only hope that it makes it upwards, because that doesn’t seem like the case at the Bella Center.
INHABITAT: What have been some standout experiences thus far? What artworks have struck a chord, and why?
GARRETT: It’s hard to tell right now, there is so much more to see in this next week, but if I chose now my vote is in for wooloo.org’s efforts and partnerships. They’ve got Superflex’s sustainable burial contracts, the Yes Men’s Coca-Cola Pledge and New Life Copenhagen. Everything they are doing is very much in the spirit of unity and many people doing small things towards a bigger goal. I think that’s a message in and of itself. And since all three of the projects I mentioned rely on documentation and masses of people as the documenters I think that it’s got the potential to show the most real human aspects of the issues being discussed and the opportunities to work together.
There is the common thread these days of “Changing light bulbs won’t save the world.†Which is true, but you know, ultimately if everyone change all light bulbs, sure it would do something about energy use. The point being that lots of people making small efforts aren’t to be scoffed at. It’s those sort of efforts, that when combined, lead to tipping points. We just aren’t there yet, and light bulbs have no future as a tipping point for the climate.
Theatres Trust announced a new three-year programme, called ECOVENUE, to provide environmental advice and assessments to 48 small scale theatres in London. The announcement was made on 14 September, the first anniversary of the Mayor of London’s Green Theatre Initiative.
After the Mayor’s Theatre Plan was announced last year, many large-scale theatres signed up to reduce their carbon emissions by 65% by 2025, but the smaller theatres did not have the budget to participate. With this grant, smaller venues will be able to apply for help to address environmental issues associated with climate change, and to reduce their energy use and to achieve Display Energy Certificates (DECs).
The Trust will be inviting theatres to apply, and details will be advertised in the coming months.
Reprinted from PRNewswire: “Theatres Trust Announces ECOVENUE Green Theatre Project for London†September 9, 2009
On 14 September 2009 at Plasa 09The 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.â€
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.
Reprinted from PRNewswire: “Theatres Trust Announces ECOVENUE Green Theatre Project for London†September 9, 2009
On 14 September 2009 at Plasa 09The 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.â€
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.
Wed 11 Sept 14.30 – 16.00
