Hospitality

The Theatres Trust Conference 12: Delivering Sustainable Theatres

The Theatres Trust, The National Advisory Public Body for Theatres, has launched its sixth annual conference, ‘Delivering Sustainable Theatres’ -the challenge of achieving the triple bottom line.

Taking place on 12 June 2012 at Stratford Circus in London, next to the Olympic Parkin East London, the Conference will explore how theatre buildings are managing their building’s resources and addressing their future sustainability.

With its timing scheduled to take place the day before the ABTT Theatre Show, Conference attendees and sponsors will be able to take advantage of these co-located events, and network with the UK’s theatre sector as they congregate in London.

The 2012 Theatres Trust Conference will address the question of‘ Delivering Sustainable Theatres’looking athow theatres are addressingthe sustainability agenda in theserapidly changing times, and how they are providing a catalyst for social and economic recovery in the communities they serve. Conference speakers, sponsors and delegates will explore how UKtheatres arecoveringthe cornerstones of sustainability and merging green building principles whilst offering unique cultural experiences.The Conference will look at how theatre design, engineering, IT infrastructure and the use of space is changing to help navigate economic pressures, provide space for hospitality and social activity, and meet the challenges of environmental change.

With rising costs of buildings management, cuts to public subsidy and a massive change in the public ownership of theatres-what does it mean to be a sustainable theatre?Is the first rule of sustainability simply to stay in business? And significantly, what of the role of the theatre in sustaining our cultural and spiritual lives?

Four years on from when The Theatres Trust Conference addressed how theatres could become ‘greener’, it is time to explore what has been achieved in terms of sustainable development given the challenges of rising energy costs, tougher building regulations, and even more difficult economic times. A key feature of Conference 12 will be the case studies from the 48 London theatres on The Theatres Trust ERDF funded ECOVENUE project.

Mhora Samuel, Director of The Theatres Trust said, “With theatres facing challenging times ahead, our conference next year will be a really important event for anyone trying to maximise the value oftheir theatre building through redesign or adaptation. As a sector we’ve come so far since our Building Sustainable Theatres Conference in 2008 and I’m delighted that we’ll be looking at some of the success stories since that time. What we clearly and urgently need to do now is establish how we take the three pillars of sustainable development -economic, social and environmental -and relate these to a theatre’s ability to sell a unique cultural experience and make sure our theatre buildings have the capacity to deliver what’s needed for today, and into the future. I’m delighted that we are offering a platform to address this topical issue head on in 2012.”

During the day, up to 250 delegates, sponsors and speakers will debate the subjects raised and in the evening, participants will have the chance to informally unwind at the Conference Reception, drawing together both ABTT exhibitors and ‘Delivering Sustainable Theatres’contributors, sponsors, delegates, and invited guests.

‘Delivering Sustainable Theatres’, presented by The Theatres Trustwill providea high profile platform for companies and individuals in the theatre community to support the better protection of theatresanddemonstrate the industry’s commitment to the sustainable development and cultural influence of theatre in our society today, and into the future.

WOOLOO.ORG in ARTFORUM

An Excerpt from Daniel Boese’s article in ARTFORUM on Wooloo’s “New Life Coppenhagen”.

“We work in the medium of hospitality,” Rosengaard says. The “New Life” project created the possibility for strangers to share their homes and experiences, to thus collaborate under the broad goal of addressing climate change in a global conference and treaty. All participants created the work together, unlike public art projects in which artists serve as teachers for a lay public. Individual acts of hospitality create hope in the face of planetary ecological crisis; strangers can agree and cooperate. But our heads of state did not follow suit; they failed to usher in an age of global cooperation at the summit. “New Life” walked the line between art and activism in a new way, updating tactics pioneered by Beuys, Gran Fury, and the Russian Constructivists: Times have changed, and the problems have only become more urgent.

WOOLOO.ORG.

Open-dialogues: Question Time #COP15

Question Time is a series of 1000 artist-led interviews, conducted throughout Copenhagen during the UN COP15 conference. In a context of inter-governmental debate and negotiation, Question Time explores an alternative approach to climate change based on personal knowledge, action, hospitality, ending, home, social sculpture, chance, future, starting, and the occasional wild card.

Question Time will hold daily open summits throughout Copenhagen – in cafes, homes, street corners, train stations and conference centres – at which ideas from the 1000 interviews will be shared and discussed, concluding with a daily statement of intent and the posting of interviews online.

Question Time asks: how do you think change occurs? What is hospitality to you? What would be your sci-fi scenario for humans surviving in extremis in a post-global meltdown universe? Where is the recycling bin in your house?

Question Time are David Berridge, Rachel Lois Clapham, Alex Eisenberg and Mary Paterson as Open Dialogues.

Follow the project and subscribe at www.questiontime.me or email info@questiontime.me

via open-dialogues: Question Time – Participate or Die?.

New Life Copenhagen: hospitality as art

I am soon to be assigned to a guest house in Copenhagen by the remarkable New Life Copenhagen art project. For five days people I don’t know, who don’t know me, will put me up durng my stay in Copenhagen.

Everything I hear from them, while I wait, makes me more and more admiring of this enterprise.

The Danes feel they have a reputation for being an unhospitable place. New Life Copenhagen has decided to turn this reputation on its head with a phenomenal act of generosity, opening the doors of their homes to 3,000 activists, NGO workers and delegates who are arriving in Denmark over the coming weeks to attend the pivotal COP15 conference.  It’s a spirit of openness you can only hoped will be matched by the governmental delegates.

In this act alone,  Woloo.org’s  Sixten Kai Nielsen and Martin Rosengaard, who created New Life Copenhagen may have already created the most significant artwork to align itself with the COP15 process:

The explain themselves: Instead of inviting artists to contribute art for a traditional museum exhibition, we have chosen to utilize hospitality and the human encounter as an exhibition platform. The purpose of the festival is to create a breeding ground for alternative ways of living together. Individual solutions are not enough. In order to stop climate changes, we have to rethink our way of life collectively.

The artists Superflex, Signa and Marisa Olson are also creating work as part of New Life Copenhagen. Olson will host a live event at Copenhagen’s City Square, Signa are going to produce a guest book in which we can all evaluate each others’ lifestyles, and Superflex are going to ask all of us to commit to a climate-friendly burial in the case that we die during our visit to Copenhagen.

Which is one of those committments I kind of hope I’m not going to have to live up to.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology