top tips: what to consider when making your work greener
Sustainability in the performing arts is increasingly important, and integrating greener practices into your creative process can be a rewarding challenge.
Whether you’re planning a new production or preparing for a tour, every step towards sustainability makes a difference. If you're looking for guidance, these top tips are here to support you.
Laura Sedgwick, producer for Theatre Green Book, shares straightforward, actionable tips to help you begin and navigate your sustainability journey.
Throughout these tips remember that touring (whether regional, national or international) is part of the wider process of making a production, and therefore many of the considerations when making your work greener will apply to whatever sort of work you are making.
1
Embed sustainable thinking from the very beginning of your planning and design process. Even if your original production sits in one venue, or just tours regionally, but you think it may end up going international, bear that in mind from the beginning so you don’t make decisions you then can’t undo.
2
Look at the Theatre Green Book and decide which level to aim for. When starting out, look at the Preliminary and Basic checklists. These can act as your ‘to do’ lists.
3
Ensure the whole team are on board with making the production green. If you are a freelancer, can you encourage the whole company to work to the Theatre Green Book standards? If you are an organisation, speak to your team and freelancers and ensure the aims are understood. Who will be responsible for monitoring progress?
4
Initial planning: set yourself a freight limit; consider how many people you really need to send abroad.
5
Venue booking: include sustainability in venue or partner agreements; try to plan your tour to minimise travel as much as possible; ask venues what equipment, objects, furniture or resources they may have locally that you could use. Ensure you get tech specs before you go to the design stage so you can work with local resources where possible.
6
Track what you are doing. You can use the Theatre Green Book Production Calculator both to estimate your material use, and to track the actuals. For touring there are two key elements of the calculator: material use (costume, set and props), and travel and transport (which gives a final overall carbon use figure as kg/CO2e).
7
8
Analyse data: review your production and consider what you have learnt for the future. Could you set new parameters for yourself (e.g. “we will only do tours we estimate will have less than XYZ carbon output”)? Make the data meaningful for you. If you have a kg/CO2e figure, is it most useful for you to divide that by the number of shows you did in total, or the number of audience members reached?
9
There are lots of resources and suggestions on the Theatre Green Book website and within the Production Detailed Guidance (page 18-19)
10
Share the fantastic work you are doing. You can download certificate logos from the Theatre Green Book website once you have achieved each level to put on your website. Share data and findings with staff, audiences, co-producers and venues. If you find any useful tips, case studies or resources, please do share them with caravan or Theatre Green Book, so they can be spread further!
Further resources
Julie’s Bicycle on Green Riders for Touring
LIFT’s work on environmentally sustainable touring
LIFT’s work on Concept Touring with report
Arts Council: International Touring and Environmental Responsibility Fund (currently closed)
European Theatre Consortium Theatre Green Book
STAGES - Sustainable Theatre Alliance for a Green Environmental Shift
Collectif 17h25example of European theatres making modular set
Written August 2024
Laura Sedgwick
Laura's background is in commercial theatre general management, and she is currently the part-time Production Associate for the independent producers Smith & Brant Theatricals. Previously she has been the Associate General Manager for National Theatre Productions, working on The Ocean at the End of the Lane (West End and Tour) and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Tour).
Theatre Green Book
The Theatre Green Book is a grassroots initiative that sets common standards for sustainable theatre across all areas of theatre practice and operation. The second edition of the Theatre Green Book UK was published in July 2024, and includes and a range of tools aimed at supporting the UK theatre sector to reach net zero by 2030. Building upon expertise from across the world, the Theatre Green Book has already been translated into 10 languages, and has growing Theatre Green Book networks across Europe, and worldwide.
