Notes from our first meeting. This came from brainstorming about the what this group could be and do.
What could this group do?
* Share good practise and examples
* Network with supportive organisations, businesses and artists
* Create a show that is environmentally friendly
* Create a model that everyone can follow – Greening your shoestring budget show guide
* Create an email list/Facebook Group/Word Press Blog
* Create a green guide on the Genesis homepage
* Encourage theatres to develop a compulsory document issued by theatres to directors and designers indicating different ways to make their show greener at this venue (eg, JMK and YV)
* Create a guide to talking/working with theatres in a green way
* Influence dialogue with the Arts Council about how their environmental aims get rolled out to G4A
* Become a first port of call for advice and resources to other organisations, groups and individuals
* Make UK-wide, international and cross disciplinary links with similar group, processes and ideas.
* Hold talks
* Invite non-theatre experts
* Apply to the Arts Council for support for a consortium of small companies to make work greenly/change their practice
* Explore the impact of eco-friendly practise on labour (eg, takes longer to make a sustainable model box
* Put pressure on big companies to generate change in mindset of theatre-making culture
* Examine the relationship between ethics and aesthetics
* Create list of easy things you can do to reduce carbon emissions – a list of facts * Create a database of businesses that provide sustainable stuff
* Street bank – loan, donate items and share skills
* Develop a green challenge event – getting a few companies/groups together to make work that is as green as possible within a time cost limit and then present it to an audience
* Green Awards ceremony to celebrate companies who are eco-conscious in their work and spreading news to others
* Gumtree type recycling group online to make sure set and costumes don’t go to waste – sharing resources
* Making links with Arts & Heritage groups (eg, V&A, National Trust, Theatre’s Trust) – thereby raising the profile of greener works, eg, V&A Late on 29th March “Cycle Culture & Design”
* Edinburgh flyering????
What could this group be?
A cross-roads for theatre-makers and environmentally-related disciplines
A forum for sharing ideas and materials/resources.
A notice board for ecology related events and performances.
An online knowledge back and exhange.
A network of like-minded people.
Being a voice in the discussion of advancing performance and ecology (activists?)
A contact point for artists/researchers?
Home to a fund which supports environmentally friendsly theatre to which practicing
artists can apply.
Education resource for schools and adults.
A festival of work and exhibition.
A group that is recognized/known to the government
A revolutionary rabble-rouser, paradigm-shifting
A radical force > capitalize on our agiility as small organizations to change/generate
change.
Representing Grants for the Arts artists, bringing them into the debate the National
Portfolio Organisations are having.
Food chain > processing down theatre chain
A channel to talk to the audience about green theatre.
Something to collate positive stories and examples
What even is this group? Is it (and these are not mutually exclusive):
– a network
– a small core group
– a group that grows
– online/in person
– what sort of practitioners?
– A company
– Officialness (a company ltd by guarantee)
How does membership work?
Wat are members’ commitments and responsibilities?
Who runs it? Who owns it?
What’s the relationship to the Young Vic? (Has Miss Julie left the building?)
What’s the relationship to Julie’s Bicycle?
A way of stopping us feeling ninilistic about the fringe (and its capacity for
wastefulness and corner cutting)
A campaign to boycott Primark from theatre productions?
EXTRA: How can we relate to and support protest performance: Greenpeace,
Platform, Liberate Tate, agit prop > Politics?
What Would We Like to get out of the Group?
*Practical skills (i.e model making with environmentally safe/friendly materials)
*Meet like minded people to talk about things for support, ideas, sharing
resources.
*Collectively a louder voice within the theatre ecology than I would have on my
own. Officialise to address the issue formally?
*A way to promote/spread/normalize ideas of ecology in performance and
making practices more mainstream.
*A way to make theatre more relevant/engaged with the real world.
*Organizing events with experts
*Fun
*Support of the Young Vic?
*Encouragement and a reminder that it’s important
*A manifesto
*A showcase with local home-grown food provided
*Accountability with green policy and practice (green watching!)
*Being made to think about this regularly.
*Widen my knowledge of different theatre forms
*Find out what’s going on in terms of theatre and sustainability events.
*A place I can discuss stuff that might bore my friends
*A sounding board.
*More brains to find solutions – pool our knowledge
*Practical knowledge-sharing. Documenting what people have done before.
*A blog/online resource.
*Find new ways to get funding and engage audiences with green work.
*A way of finding out about producers, designers, lighting designers who are
interested in this field.
Why should environmental concerns influence your work/process?
*The bottom line (financial)
*Could/should this be used as an argument to convince people who don’t agree for other reasons?
*Theatre can be very wasteful (but also has the ability to be very un-wasteful).
*It can make the aesthetic better – Creative limitations. Setting yourself particular challenges/limitations
*Other sectors are taking it really seriously. Why shouldn’t theatre?
*Theatre can change hearts and minds – and the world? – from daily habits to philosophy.
*It makes theatre more responsive to the contemporary moment.
*Drama is about choices (and so has the capacity to explore environmental choices – and consequences).
*Should there be more plays about environmental issues?
*BUT plays about “the issue” can be limiting (and also preaching to the
converted).
*There are simple things we should be doing automatically and aren’t.
*We could consider environmental concerns at the outset of the process –
changing the rules.
Because often awareness doesn’t translate into action.
*There’s a need to explore the power of getting people together (in a theatre
etc).
Because maybe theatre won’t exist in the future if we don’t deal with these
issues.
*It will affect your work in the future whether you like it or not.
*Theatre is exciting when its made out of raw materials.
*There’s no point in making theatre unless you have something urgent to
communicate.
Performance and Ecology Network 