Becoming a Green Champion by Paula Birtwistle

June has been an exciting month, yes it was Glastonbury and it’s been sunny but you know what’s really made the difference? For the first time ever in the history of being a Production Manager I received an email solely about an artist’s Green Rider!

If I’ve lost you at Green Rider then please have a read of Lorna Rees’ excellent article about them.

Let’s take a step back, I’m the Production Manager of Whirligig, an outdoor arts festival in Weston-super-Mare. I have a real passion for sustainability in our sector and have been the Green Champion for Super Culture, the arts organisation that works in Weston-super-Mare for three years now. As a part of the Without Walls Touring Network Partnership I’ve been on an amazing sustainability journey.

But what about the artists? We can only do so much from our end and this is a crisis that has to have solutions embraced by everyone.

I was thrilled to be given the chance to work with this year’s cohort of Without Walls commissioned and Blueprint artists to talk with them about how they might take steps towards making their shows more environmentally responsible. Some companies are blazing trails here already, there are some brilliantly passionate people who just have sustainability at the heart of everything they do.

Then there are people who want to get going but just don’t know where to start. When I talk to those artists I always find that they are doing more than they think, it’s often in an artist’s nature to be efficient and they tend to reuse things and look for cheap options for economic reasons too. By simply tracking their materials usage I’m sure that every company I spoke to would be working at the Theatre Green Book baseline standard.

Another theme that emerged was a really conscious move to reducing what is needed to be carried on tour, and by starting thinking early enough about this, the set design could be stripped right back.

Most companies are willing to take the smallest vehicle possible and send other members by public transport where possible. Costumes tend to be sourced second-hand and are often key pieces worn over performers’ own garments which saves both washing and buying. So many small things add up though.

It was great to talk to so many people and hopefully encourage and reassure them that they are already on the journey! Their next steps might be as simple as recording some aspects of their materials, making some small changes to their transport or… you guessed it, writing a Green Rider.

By adding this to your technical rider you send a strong signal to the rest of the industry that everyone cares and that this is a joint responsibility. It pushes us all to keep the environment at the fore-front of our minds and not let it get lost in the mania of producing and touring a new show.

For our part at Whirligig we have added a ‘Green’ paragraph to our artists contracts and info packs.

We are asking artists to let us know how they travelled to our festival through a simple Google form and letting them know that we will support them where possible to travel in a low carbon way. We let them know that they can ask us to provide tech, infrastructure and props here so they don’t have to transport everything. Something like stage weights is a good example, let us provide these for you to save transport weight for you. We also let you know what food and drink we will be provided and that we’d like you to bring your own water bottles.

I realise that it’s a matter of trust for touring artists and that it would be unnerving not to carry everything you need for your show but I do hope that we can build this trust through Green Riders, and conversations across our network and we can start to lean into lighter, lower carbon ways to make our magic into reality.

I look forward to receiving your Green Riders.