Tread Lightly - moving towards our new Sustainability Action Plan and our target for 2025 and 2026

Conversely, since my taking up the role of Head of Production in 2024, I’ve been looking at how we minimise impact, how we tread lightly and where possible leave no trace. I’ve been leading on developing a new Sustainability Action Plan and Strategy, working across the organisation in looking how we continue our great work in the field. At times it has had me scratching my head, juggling the contrary journey of how we as outdoor arts professionals make a big impact for audiences and places, whilst ensuring our collective impact to the planet is as low as possible.

My first steps were to dig into the abundance of great work we already do. Our sustainable practice is a key organisation thread; its prevalence sits alongside health and safety and our diversity, inclusion and equity priorities. I’ve been fortunate to have at my disposal a wealth of metrics, information and data; from our waste streams at Cobden Works to our fuel usage at the many Fire Gardens. This has enabled a deep dive into trends that add up to one of our key sustainability indicators, the organisations carbon equivalent footprint.

From the start of this process, I’ve been doing a lot of asking; asking our production and freelance team about how best to deal with workshop waste, how we account for propane, how we make better use of storage so we can easily reuse makes from historical projects. I’ve asked our communications team about the impact of digital and AI carbon contributions and how this informs our thinking for future action planning. I’ve worked closely with our central team about how best we measure our impacts and how this can be further improved. I’ve sought advice from colleagues and friends from within our sector (and from outside) about their experiences and pulled on their knowledge.

As an organisation we are dialled in, enthusiastic and knowledgeable for all things we can be doing to lessen our impact on the planet.  I’ve not needed to think about buy-in as we collectively know the importance of sustainability in all we do, but rather I’ve needed to dig deeper into priorities and weigh them up to our core activities as a business and arts organisation.

Understanding a whole life cycle approach for our processes has been key for my understanding and dealing with potential pressures on our work and the impacts on our sustainability. This includes looking at the life span of work, commissions, makes and fabrication projects. Through a process of ‘creation to deconstruction’ we are highlighting the knock-on demands of storage, maintenance and reuse of materials. As ever I’m always asking questions and help from our incredibly knowledgeable friends (big shout to GMAST and Emerge!).

Thinking long term and being specific for short to medium term. Our action plan is a starting point that has also started the ball rolling on longer term ambitions for our work. Firstly, came knowledge of our challenges (most will hear my grumblings about the skip), then a look at how we adapt some of our process led work to address these challenges, and then through conversations and wider input how we continue to be innovators in the field. It is early days still, but I have confidence that this approach helps us have an eye on future challenges, such as environmental costs of AI usage and input into our data collection of our digital carbon footprint, through to the energy play off from recycling lithium batteries vs energy saved through their usage in our work, and whilst also seeking innovations in the materials we use most often.

We will drop our carbon emissions by 20% by the end of 2026 (based on 2024 levels). In 2024, our overall C02 equivalent was 166t, so we are aiming to find savings of 33.2tonnes (about 4.15 fully grown Tyrannosaurus Rex's). We will do this in a variety of ways from improving our waste monitoring and decreasing our mixed waste output to increasing our solar energy generation and investigating how we use that same energy in our shows. The new 2025 to 2026 Action Plan roadmaps the way and hopes to deliver us to this ambitious destination.

And a final thought, gleaned over the past few months; there is a tendency to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task at hand; protecting our planet for future generations. I’ve found that as a sector we inherently care about our impact, be that to create truly life affirming creative work, whilst also ensuring we are treading lightly and leaving only a sense of wonder as we go.