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Theatre Green Book


TeeJay

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I fear that some aspects of sustainability may be put on the back burner in deference to survivability right now though...

This is where nearly all people's thinking starts. But it comes from the idea that "green" products are more expensive, which is already assuming you need the product.

If you are effective in finding ways to avoid doing things (without affecting the production adversely) or do things differently then you can save money on the things you don't buy ...Where it will need more is in time - and I realise that in commercial productions, time costs money, possibly more money than anything else. But for small productions the trade-off is less clear, either because volunteers are involved, or because person X has to be paid to be present between certain times, and may not be busy all of that time (in theory!).

 

The oddity I thought was that the technical section doesn't mention lower power consumption lighting - if you are going to hire (ownership is different) then looking to hire more efficient fixtures (if available) will reduce consumption and save carbon. It saves a lot more if you are running them from a generator, as if often rehearsed here! It's easy to over-do this, but it doesn't get mentioned at all that I can see (whilst 20% reductions on tungsten lamp ratings do).

 

There has always been tremendous support on this forum for ways to re-use and re-purpose what people have already got, and that could probably have been given more prominence. I would much prefer to build something out of planks from a skip (OK, unknown source, but were headed for a bonfire) than buy new timber, even if it is sourced from top-notch forestry operations. This is much easier if you have access to skills (not relying on building 100% to a published plan) and tools (especially a planing machine!), which of course need long-term investment (time or money). Local knowledge (which companies receive more pallets than they know what to do with?) helps again here, which they do recognise in a lot of places.

Edited by richardash1981
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Remember that any reduction in wasted power in your lanterns, will pay back in air-con savings at 115% or more. (If you have A/C)

I've heard of at least one venue where a total transition to an LED rig caused an increase in heating costs which over the payback period of the new rig was greater than the cost of replacing the rig?!?!?

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This is where nearly all people's thinking starts....

 

I was thinking more in terms of the time and management overheads needed in establishing, promoting, measuring and monitoring sustainable practice. The practical steps you mention are great - and may well be easily implemented in cost effective or cost saving manner. My (admittedly limited) experience of implementing sustainability at a business wide level so that it's part of the company's mindset and practice, is that this does have a cost attached. Sustainability Management (e.g. achieving compliance with ISO 20121) may well (eventually) save money, safeguard revenues, or even help generate additional income, but I felt this might not be the first thing that companies would focus on right now?

Edited by Simon Lewis
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Remember that any reduction in wasted power in your lanterns, will pay back in air-con savings at 115% or more. (If you have A/C)

I've heard of at least one venue where a total transition to an LED rig caused an increase in heating costs which over the payback period of the new rig was greater than the cost of replacing the rig?!?!?

Possible; I'd not thought of that.The theatre I'm most involved with the A/C is on and the heating off in the auditorium by the time the interval comes around even in the depths of winter. So many variables, it would be hard to be sure what would happen, and if there is any hope of prediction

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Remember that any reduction in wasted power in your lanterns, will pay back in air-con savings at 115% or more. (If you have A/C)

I've heard of at least one venue where a total transition to an LED rig caused an increase in heating costs which over the payback period of the new rig was greater than the cost of replacing the rig?!?!?

Putting on the stage lighting has always been a thing to do after any painting to reduce drying time, or before a dance show for the performers to 'aid their warming-up routines'. Neither quite work the same with LED installations.

 

I had a chat only yesterday about mains dimmers being dumped in favour of LED. The guy was taken aback when I mentioned smaller groups/venues can't afford to run LED as the payback time on new LED fixtures far exceeds the running costs of tungsten.

 

example an AmDram does 2 shows a year, that's 4 performances and 4 rehearsals with a lighting rig of say 10KW so total of less than 8x 5 hours x10KW [lets well over estimate the time]=400KWh x 20p = £80 [in reality this is way over the top] Running LED will reduce this to about 25% so saving £60 per year.

 

Each new fitting costs say £320 or 4 years electricity and replacing the whole rig say £6000 or 75 years. Obviously a proper theatre running hundreds of fittings several nights a week is a totally different matter where payback may be measured in months or even weeks.

 

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The answer (as usual) for a group that only uses kit for 40 hours a year is to hire. You're looking for some very significant longevity to see ROI on 40 hours a year.

 

On sustainability, an interesting area of balance for me is sustainability vs H&S. You can use old ends of paint tubs from random sources, but can you get a MSDS for them? You can use old pallet wood, but is it treated with anything nasty, and is it full of nails that present a hazard when chopping it down to size? Similarly, you can store huge amounts of furniture and always reuse it, but can you do that safely without creating a death trap of pile furniture, or creating a large fuel source for a fire, or overloading your racking shelves.

 

There is usually a common sense middle ground, but where that line is may be perceived differently by a H&S officer used to inspecting offices compared to a set designer knowing that that set of 4 chairs would suit loads of different eras/styles etc.

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Remember that any reduction in wasted power in your lanterns, will pay back in air-con savings at 115% or more. (If you have A/C)

I've heard of at least one venue where a total transition to an LED rig caused an increase in heating costs which over the payback period of the new rig was greater than the cost of replacing the rig?!?!?

 

In the short term, that was the case at my old building. Less so the day-to-day heating costs, but the upsizing of the boiler required.

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Every few years we get dragged into some sort of eco theatre solution (going back 20 years now) and the problem always seems to be that until the whole industry adopts the new process, no one will adopt the new process/kit. Back in the early noughties we worked with Arcola, James Thomas engineering & White Light to develop a self contained hydrogen powered fuel cell with theatrical quality LED lighting all in a nice easy plug and play package; we even did a run of summer gigs with the RSC to prove that you could run an 800 seat venue with high spec lighting and sound all powered from a single hydrogen fuel cell producing a few kW of stable power and it was a great success. Until it got to the real world - lighting designers wouldn't compromise their artistic vision by sticking to the energy efficient light sources that worked best with it, sourcing regular hydrogen supply proved difficult outside London & because the rig wasn't industry standard parts no-one would risk it out on the road because (quite understandably) if anything stopped working there were only a couple of nerds in London who could trouble shoot the system and if they needed to repair or replace any kit on the road they could only do so with a handful of very specific suppliers rather than being able to walk into any rental company and have a choice of 20 alternatives.
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Well I followed the link and found the usual flow charts and the usual verbiage and the usual toolkit. No doubt there was a road map and a raft of proposals (ending in all likelihood with appointing some kind of sustainability captain) amongst the stuff that had I gone on I strongly suspect would be really pretty obvious. I found the guide, in short, unreadable. (Before I retired I had to read reams of this stuff and it is really all the same. ) The fact is that it will contain a few simple truths that shouldn't need saying and aspirations that will in the end fail because it will be everybody else's resource hungry 'artistic vision' that is seen as the problem. I was struck- as so often these days through youtube - by comparing Status Quo's live performance in I think Madrid in 1975 with what they considered essential for the 2013 reunion tour.

 

The answer is to pare things down and go back to the basics of what we are trying to do. Whether there is really the will to do that - or would be without the drastic cuts in arts spending that will have take place over the next five years - I rather doubt. Sadly

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I have been peripherally involved in environmental concerns since before Lovelock published "Gaia" back in 1979 and had friends living off-grid in some odd places including cities. I believe in doing things as consciously as possible and was bussing audiences into car free gigs 20 years ago. The concept of a "Green Theatre" model is to be welcomed even if over 15 years later than formal measures for events production like BS 8901. (Here comes the) BUT!

 

I live in Mid Wales where middle class English incomers have bought productive farmland and "re-wilded" it into a boggy scrubland. The current fad is reintroducing wolves which were killed off here in 1390 when the population of England was 2.5M yet nobody is suggesting we cull 52M of they English to give wolves room. Having a "green" agenda for such an over-centralised sector as theatre when the sites of said theatres could be under water in less than a century and nobody might be travelling anywhere long before that is just swerving the issue.

 

Again here in Powys we have a lobby group fighting against the council and Natural Resources Wales who have decided that managed withdrawal is the only solution at Fairbourne. The campaigners are mostly retirees and incomers so when the locals start in about Cantref Gwaelod they laugh until they are taken to Borth.

 

Another mad example was when Prince did 21 nights at the Dome ostensibly to cut down the carbon footprint of his tours. 80% of his audiences flew in, most of them long-haul, it was a fiasco. You young 'uns really do need to get radical and fast, tinkering with energy saving is futile when the audience travels from all around the UK. Sustainability is only one third environmental, there is economic and socially sustainable which are equally important. You somehow have to square those three circles. Your best hopes may be streaming or VR or some new service but live events have to do a lot more than "Leave No Trace" and bio-diesel to survive.

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Lot of viewpoints on this one - interesting to see.

 

As Simon Lewis says, the immediate financial concerns remain immediate. Whether or not there is a long term saving, there will be an immediate cost involved for any practice if it isn't already established. Arts Council England (and other funding bodies) already require some thought and response to the idea of sustainability so there is a requirement to some companies to already have this under consideration.

 

I'm old enough to remember the Mayor of London championing a Green Theatre Network that certainly wouldn't be an easy Google search to find these days ...

 

As richardash1981 notes, there are some technical gaps. I know that the ASD is working on a more detailed section for sound - whether the ALD have also something in the works to add to this?

 

ImagineerTom notes the issues of adoption - from what I've heard from this initiative, the idea is to have this as a baseline. The work of the Arcola then can be held as a gold (green?) standard. But there are a lot more organisations and companies putting their name to this than I've seen previously. The content is broadly similar to any such endeavour that's looked at theatre environmental sustainability - and I get Junior8 frustrations there.

 

That doesn't mean however I agree with the implication that we shouldn't try. I'm not for one moment thinking that this new green code will be the means that will finally convince the human race to fundamentally alter it's approach to it's treatment of the planet. We already know from the futurologists who were working as far back as the 1950's that a substantial change in the climate is inevitable at this point. As kerry davies mentions, the 'Green Theatre' concept is to be welcomed and we should have input. That's how we then raise the concerns that it doesn't really address the economic and social sustainability aspects, or that people find the associated blumpf impregnable.

 

For that I'd throw it back to you and ask what you would see improved. Possibly address those concerns with those writing the code as well ...

 

It is not a simple or easy topic. There may be 'easy wins' but the core of it is going to require a seismic shift in how we approach things.

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