Greenlight your ideas

I have been reading the latest report from Julie’s Bicycle (JB) (‘Moving Arts: Managing the Carbon Impacts of our Touring’), with close interest. As has been reported (AP221), the document looks at the carbon impacts of national and international touring for orchestras, theatre and bands, and suggests a raft of practical actions to reduce emissions. It’s the usual JB mix of thoughtful good sense, detailed research and ordered practicality. But as I read Alison Tickell’s foreword to the report, the pain was palpable. She speaks of paralysis, timidity and general dithering across performing arts sectors. She reports on people arguing the relative importance of addressing carbon emissions over general sustainability as if they were diametrically opposed, instead of getting on and doing something. “We are, as a community, short on vision and long on doubt,” she says.
 

The report is not a comfortable read. It is a call to action and quashes any hope that as a sector, touring is a minimal contributor to carbon emissions for the arts. The headlines are stark. It finds that while orchestral touring produces 8,600 tonnes of carbon annually, the amount produced by touring theatre is 13,000 tonnes, whilst greenhouse gas emissions from live music tours are in the region of 85,000 tonnes. Given that one tonne of CO2 is about equivalent to the size of a 100-seat studio theatre, 106,600 tonnes each year is a shocking amount. The report is very clear that it is not advocating a cessation of touring; rather its aim is to offer information to raise awareness and to enable intelligent change to take place. The route it prescribes is apparently straightforward: understand the issues; measure your outputs; identify what you can do to reduce your outputs; tell your story in order to engage others.

WRESTLING WITH RESEARCH
Perhaps one of the difficulties with the rational helpfulness of the JB approach is that in piling on the research findings, the very breadth of the information offered, which is clearly intended to enlighten and to empower, can have the opposite effect and leave the reader feeling overwhelmed and helpless. There are, for instance, no less than seven ‘hot topic’ contributions by an impressive range of academics and experts, ranging from the international governance and regulation, through an analyses of the relative impacts of air and sea transport, and the various ways in which audiences compound the problem. The actions proposed, whilst tailored to distinguish between various roles and responsibilities in venue, technical and production management, actually require that a carefully co-ordinated measurement processes is in place and that at all stages suppliers are challenged and cajoled to play their part. All of this is excellent advice. However, the difficulty remains that we have got to want to do this, and we need to believe that the effort involved in changing practice
will make sufficient difference and that it will benefit us.
This well-ordered rationality is poles apart from the decentralised, inspirational and headline-hitting approach catalysed by film director Frannie Alexander’s 10:10 Campaign. 10:10 requires no agreed methodology, offers no accreditation and accepts no opt-outs. The invitation is simply to sign up and do something to tackle fuel consumption from wherever you are – a corporate giant, a small-scale touring company, a football club, a family business, an individual. We are all challenged equally to find our own ways to use 10% less fuel by the turn of the year. It is not ordered – it’s urgent, random, eclectic, exciting and apparently time limited. And it is triggering a huge diversity of responses, largely outside the arts sector.

CALCULATING CARBON
But what are we talking about here? At its simplest, carbon reduction is about reducing the consumption of the carbon-based fuels we use to heat our homes, work and leisure spaces, produce our consumables and power our transport. The attitude could easily be that surely, it is the energy companies that need to act? Isn’t it more important that BP sorts out the oil leak off Louisiana than music and theatre companies agonise over their travel arrangements? Well maybe, but the point remains that if what we do involves consuming carbon-based electricity or petrol now, then future global warming is our collective responsibility.
Julie’s Bicycle and 10:10 are chalk and cheese in their approach but in truth, both offer contributions to tackling carbon reduction – and (ironically, perhaps?) they both arise from the arts sector. They leave us with little excuse not to act. The sad truth is that the ability to release the pent up, often paralysed energy of art organisations described by Alison Tickell, also rests with funders and sponsors. Climate change presents no less of a challenge to them, and we need to recognise that a shift in practice is needed away from wasteful, short-term programmes to a more responsible long-term approach that rewards intelligent change over time. Climate change is not going to go away; neither will it be addressed through yet another criteria check on a funding form.