Margaret Jones describes Sherman Cymru’s crusade to put walking, cycling and public transport at the heart of its efforts to save the planet.
To put what follows in context, I should tell you three things: I still darn my socks; I learnt the art of frugality from my mother (and she was frugal!); and I was influenced and motivated by John McGrath (Director of National Theatre Wales) when he said “when we travel, we should make our travel a journey, not a trip or a superficial visit”.
I was also personally terrified by a speaker from the Centre for Alternative Technology who drove home an unequivocal and apocalyptic message about the need to challenge and change our resource-use behaviour. These things give you an indication of why I am personally motivated to find ways to encourage myself, my friends, my colleagues to change. But I’m not the only one at Sherman Cymru – we have begun to develop some simple ways of making it easier for people to do better by our planet, and we are one of the first arts organisations in Wales to sign up to the Welsh Government Sustainable Development Charter which gives us access to a resource of like-minded organisations who can share best practice and brain waves.
We’re probably not doing much more or less than any of you: we recycle as much as we can (including food waste), batteries are recycled and we’re moving towards replacing them with re-chargeables. We recycle as much of our sets as possible – and the bits that we can’t recycle end up in bags for our wood-burning stoves. Costumes, likewise: recycled, re-used, re-made and re-formed.
We have three Pool Cycles that were languishing in semi-retirement in staff members’ back-yards and they kindly donated them to the company. We were fortunate to receive a grant from Cardiff Council’s ‘Keeping Cardiff Moving’ initiative which paid for the refurbishing and maintenance of the cycles; safety wear (including helmets) waterproofs, hi-viz jackets, pumps and repair kits. Four members of staff received training in cycle maintenance, including the practical exercise of taking a tyre off, inner tube out, mending a puncture, resetting brakes and understanding gears. Others had cycling lessons up one of the scariest roads in Cardiff and came back whooping at the achievement! Keeping Cardiff Moving also paid for Cycle Hoops which will be installed on sign-posts outside the theatre for visitors to be able to lock their bicycles to, and a covered cycle-shelter at the rear of the building for staff.
We’re signed up to the Cardiff Cycle Challenge where, over a three week period, the challenge is to get our colleagues who don’t usually cycle to give it a go for a 10 minute ride during the week. Thinking of our tummies, one of the prizes is a £40 voucher for Carluccio’s – ha! suddenly everyone is motivated!
We’ve recently changed part of our induction for new members of staff to include questions about travel to work. We issue up-to-date copies of Cardiff Cycle Map, and help staff work out routes between work and home where they feel safe walking and cycling or using the bus/train. A member of staff will accompany them on the route until they feel happy/confident on their own.
We have support and co-operation from Cardiff Bus company – a bus service stops directly outside the theatre, real-time information is available for our customers so they will be able to wait in the theatre in the warm until a bus is due to arrive, the name of the theatre is included as a stop on the bus time-table, and we have worked with Cardiff Bus Directors on descriptions of how to connect/interchange with other bus routes to get to the theatre. We will be prioritising walking, cycling, bus and train travel, in that order, in our travel information.
We won’t change everyone’s attitude, but we do believe that the cumulative impact of small decisions is worth the effort.
Margaret Jones is Sherman Cymru’s General Manager