Vision and rigour

Arcola Theatre, housed in a former clothes factory in East London, was founded in 2000 by Mehmet Ergen, the present Artistic Director, and Leyla Nazli, the present Executive Producer. Funded initially from the founders’ personal credit cards, Arcola now enjoys Off-West End status and regular funding from Arts Council England. I became involved in Arcola in 2004 and now work alongside Mehmet and Leyla as Executive Director. We launched our sustainability aspirations in July 2007.

First the objections. To be carbon neutral would we not have to account for every coffee sold and every costume worn? Probably, but that isn’t the point. To be the world’s first carbon neutral theatre is not a literal objective. It is a challenge and an inspiration. It is shorthand for a more tangible and pragmatic aim: “to radically improve the sustainability of urban lifestyles using theatre skills, influence, entrepreneurialism and public subsidy”.   The ultimate vision for Arcola is not the creation of a carbon neutral theatre, but the leveraging of theatre’s ability to influence the behaviour of the wider public. Something as deliberately irregular as art does not lend itself to productive carbon footprinting, thus the application of rigour is not to endless analysis of specific productions but to the selection of generalised approaches that consistently deliver progress. Thus, at the nuts and bolts level, Arcola plans to:   • Make the building fabric and its operation an exemplar of sustainability best practice • Install renewable energy technologies on-site to match the net annual heat and electrical energy requirements of the building, and • Develop methods and partnerships to reduce the negative environmental impact of theatre productions, including set building, audience travel, marketing and waste disposal.   These rational steps are important in helping organisations to reduce their own CO2 emissions, and will probably become compulsory in the coming years. Whilst this approach is appropriate for the likes of supermarkets and insurance companies, arts organisations with eco-aspirations should be doing much more – not least because that is where things get really interesting.   The excitement for us lies in: • Creating an energy technology innovation centre (incubator) in the theatre, which will bring together technical, entrepreneurial and artistic creativity • Producing interactive tools to communicate the benefits of technologies and practices deployed at Arcola to tens of thousands of audience members and remote school pupils • Using existing community links to take the sustainability message to hard-to-reach groups, and • Re-interpreting and contextualising theatre works about science, environment and society to motivate change in audience behaviour.   Our approach is to create a parallel strand of work, similar in structure to our theatre programme, which will involve our in-house team alongside visiting ‘sustainability’ companies working at Arcola to develop and deliver sustainability ‘products’. Projects in development include: • enthusing and informing older members of the community about energy efficiency and helping them to access necessary finance • creating a foyer display to communicate the impact of specific theatre activities (like making a cappuccino) and suggesting greener alternatives (filter coffee) • and showcasing state-of-the-art fuel cell power generation technologies. There is much uncharted territory before us. We invite you to join us in making sustainability an opportunity to re-examine and readjust society; and not just another source of do’s and don’ts.