The Stage

Exclusive: Carbon footprint of touring theatre revealed

Published Thursday 17 June 2010 at 11:33 by Natalie Woolman

Moving sets, transporting casts and lighting hotel rooms for British touring theatre companies creates as many greenhouse gas emissions every year as flying around the world 2,680 times, new research has revealed.

According to a new report to be published by green arts organisation Julie’s Bicycle next week, and seen exclusively by The Stage, British touring theatre companies caused around 13,400 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions within the UK and globally in 2009.

This figure includes transporting staff, freight and accommodation, but not the emissions generated by venues themselves, audience travel or the electricity needed to power the shows. If these were also included, the figure would be much higher.

Commercial theatre in the UK, which makes around a third of all touring performances across the country, accounts for two thirds of the total touring greenhouse gas emissions of the sector.

Overseas touring by small and middle-scale subsidised theatre accounts for 5% of all touring performances in the UK, but a fifth of the sector’s GHG emissions. Sian Alexander, Julie’s Bicycle theatre associate director, said: “The research shows touring isn’t as impactful as we feared it might be, but that doesn’t mean we can be complacent - there is still plenty of scope to become more efficient and plenty of reasons to do so.

“We haven’t set a target for reduction, I think the industry will now identify its own ambitions and this research gives it the tools. Even the process of collating the information for this research has raised the level of understanding of this issue within touring organisations and we have found there is a considerable appetite for action.”

For overseas touring, air travel is usually responsible for the largest emissions. In the UK, hotel accommodation and freighting were significant sources of emissions. In the report, Julie’s Bicycle sets out 12 headline recommendations for the sector.

These include that theatre companies estimate emissions before a tour and measure and report them when the tour is finished. It also suggests that funders, such as Arts Council England, should make their support conditional on companies taking these steps.

Theatrical Management Association president Rachel Tackley said: “I think the Julie’s Bicycle research is an incredibly valuable resource. It will undoubtedly inspire further debate and is a step change in helping theatre producers and presenters make better-informed decisions about how we choose to run our industry.”

Julie’s Bicycle has created a free tool, Industry Green, which is due to go live on the company’s website today (June 17). This will enable theatre companies to calculate their emissions.

The organisation is also planning to run a series of sustainable touring workshops with the TMA later this year.

A database of venues with environmental accreditation and a similar database of suppliers, a standard template green rider for venues and a standard template for venues to report environmental performance would also benefit the sector, according to the report.

The research is part of the three-part Moving Arts study, which also looks at touring bands and orchestras. The theatre section was based on 31 tour leg samples from 13 touring theatre companies, which were broken down and then extrapolated to get an estimated total carbon footprint for the UK touring theatre sector in 2009.

The study estimates that the total audience for venue-based performances by UK touring theatre is 18 million people.

The report will be launched at the National Theatre on June 22.