Lorna Rees on Green Riders for Outdoor Artists

WHAT IS A GREEN RIDER? 

A Green Rider sits alongside your Technical Rider and it details the things you need from a festival or presenting venue/host organisation to ensure that you can deliver your work in the most environmentally-friendly way possible. I think it’s an empowering way to address some of the things artists need to keep creating greener work. However, this territory can be bewilderingly vast, jargon-filled and very specialist, so I’ve tried to create a simple rider by looking at other people’s and taking advice from festivals and artists. As with technical riders – the fulfilment of a Green Rider can sometimes be a conversation – but I think the conversation is the important thing to create a better touring sector for the planet.

Last year I went to the Without Walls Green Forum event at 101 Outdoor Arts with various producers, artists and festival directors. I had conversations about how hard it can be for artists to feel empowered to make change when working with festivals – and that’s where Green Riders come in – artists actually being proactive about asking for what they need. Without Walls has supported me to look at how to establish this practice more widely in the Outdoor Arts. When I talked to Sho Shibata, Director of Outdoor Arts UK (sector support organisation for Outdoor Arts) he said “tackling the environmental crisis might look like a daunting task, but every little change we make in our everyday and professional lives can go a long way in making a collective difference”. I agree – change is iterative. 

Now, there are quite a few people doing this in the music industry and in indoor theatre – but in all of my conversations most outdoor artists hadn’t yet created one for themselves. So I started this process by doing a lot of research. Of course, artists or companies should have a bespoke version of their own Green Rider. Different sizes of organisation and show will need different things. But the idea is to encourage anyone who is touring work outdoors to create their own Green Rider for their work – and for Festivals to value this and to take it as seriously as the technical rider.  

In a Green Rider, you might have basic stuff, such as ensuring that there is signposted drinking water for artists to fill up reusable bottles, to slightly more complex things like accommodation being near performance venues and increasing budgets for casts to travel by public transport. These are all things you can ask for in a Green Rider. You might need to talk about power generators or biodegradable confetti cannons. All of the artists I spoke with were concerned about the practicalities of having a Green Rider and if it would be adopted or respected by presenting festivals (and honestly, every artist I spoke to had a story about not having a tap to fill reusable water bottles with). So there is a way for all of us to go. This is definitely a journey. 

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IF I HAVE A GREEN RIDER WILL THE FESTIVAL EVEN LOOK AT IT?

Many, many festivals in the UK will already have a pretty binding environmental policy, especially if they are local authority run, or Arts Council NPOs. It is a priority, and so in theory this should be absolutely something that they take very seriously. I asked Andrew Loretto of Hat Fair, the UK’s longest-running Street Theatre Festival, whether he welcomed Green Riders and he told me that “Hat Fair would be very supportive of artists supplying Green Riders, because for us, we support both artists and the art form and the best way of making that happen. Outdoor artists are really practical, as are we, and so it’s always about a dialogue and finding a way together.”. I like this idea of dialogue and finding mutually agreeable solutions.

In my research I also spoke with Dom Kippin, who produces Inside Out Dorset. He felt that rather than being a negative thing, it would be seen as extremely favourable by Inside Out for artists to have a Green Rider. In all of their festival commissioning and presenting contracts they have a clause about the climate and ecological emergency – mainly this is around reducing unfavourable impact on the environment, consumption, monitoring carbon emissions, conserving and supporting sustainable resources and considering environmental impacts, but as he said “that artists are also considering this makes it easier for us to fulfil our festival and our properly consider the planet.”. All festivals – at least certainly those that are publicly funded should have an environmental policy – and so why shouldn’t artists too?

IT’S HARD AND FULL OF COMPROMISE

At the National Association of Street Artists annual meet up hosted at Walk the Plank this year (it’s called FLOI – For the Love of It and it’s great) I floated the idea of Green Riders to see if it was something which might be positively received. A huge thank you to all of them for the brilliantly warm response the idea got. I really acknowledge that this feels like yet another thing for artists to do – another form and policy for people who are often working with tiny resource are expected to do – but I suppose I feel that it’s about us having a bit of power to ask for what we need to make our work – along with a lockable dressing room and access to a clean toilet and being paid on time – some of which isn’t necessarily always seen as standard. Having a Green Rider for me is all part of the direction of travel, and part of ‘being the change’.

TEMPLATES

I’ve provided a template for a small-scale company, the Green Rider for our show, GEOPHONIC. You might use it as a template, or you might already have a WAY better one – in which case please share it with me! I have looked at LOTS of examples of Green Riders from across the performing artist industry to create it and had great support from Mark Denbigh from Norfolk and Norwich Festival.

This rider has been put together with support and advice from lots of people – including Julie’s Bicycle, 101 Outdoor Arts, OAUK, Dom Kippin from Inside Out Dorset, Andrew Loretto from HatFair, Anaïs Biaux, Tess Farley and Mimosa Connor at Without Walls and the Without Walls Artists Advisory Group. The most brilliant conversations I’ve had about this are with artists though – including Joli Vyan, Francesca Baglione and Liz Pugh from Walk the Plank. A huge thank you to everyone who has thoughtfully contributed to this process.