Learning from leaders in sustainability: Chichester Festival Theatre

This is the first instalment in our Spotlight on Entertainment series.

—

As part of Canned Wine Group’s partnership with UK Theatre Awards, we’ve been fortunate to learn more about the stories behind the inspiring theatres and venues that have deservingly won the much-celebrated awards. It’s clear that a combination of passionate teams, outstanding creativity, and ongoing dedication to the arts is what’s behind each and every success story.

Abi (Key Account Manager for Entertainment) was lucky enough to catch up with Angela Buckley (Projects and Events Coordinator & Green Book Coordinator) and Ben Geering (Head of Customer Operations) from Chichester Festival Theatre, this year’s UK Theatre Awards Excellence in Sustainability award winner.

In a socioeconomic climate that poses surmounting challenges for the arts industry, simply running business as usual can feel as the only priority. For Chichester Festival Theatre, however, it’s evident that sustainability plays an essential role in everything they do. The team’s commitment to integrating it into the whole organisation has led to impressive results. For this Sustainable Sips article, we get insights into what sustainability means for this leader within the theatre industry.

—

The progress that Chichester Festival Theatre has made is commendable:

● Resources once put into disposable press night gifts have been diverted to mark the occasion by supporting projects that support nature and wildlife;

● They’ve partnered with Community Transport West Sussex to introduce a free theatre bus for audience travel from the station;

● They are recognised as a Bronze Carbon Literate Organisation.

And it’s clear the list doesn’t end there.

What stands out from our conversation is the importance of collaboration in achieving their sustainability goals. For Angela, it’s equally important to collaborate with peers from within their own organisation, and work closely with external partners and freelancers, where the team can learn from many outside experiences and insights. It’s also interesting to hear that the theatre has its own Green Committee, organising events as part of Great Big Green Week, as well as sustainability forming its own agenda point on several internal meetings to help engage the whole team with the journey.

Angela explains that they have short, medium and long-term goals so that the team can balance what will have the biggest impact. To aid this, Chichester Festival Theatre works alongside Theatre Green Book (an initiative and framework to help the theatre industry work more sustainably), and has integrated the three pillars of Production, Operations, and Buildings, into the organisation to supportdecision-making and progress their sustainability journey. Angela highlights one of the key benefits of Theatre Green Book is understanding timelines and what is achievable, which helps their teams with prioritisation. In an organisation where there are many different teams, stakeholders, and suppliers to coordinate, ranging from freelancers and external partners, to in-house departments (across building operations, technical, production, visitor experience, and catering), it’s evident that early decision-making and aligning shared goals is key. At Chichester Festival Theatre, one of their core values is being sustainably minded, and having every single contributor aligned with this is paramount to meaningful progress.

The inspiring progress, though, is not without its challenges and finding the best way to communicate the message externally. While being an incredibly useful tool, Theatre Green Book uses rather specific language and the art of using this to map out their sustainability vision to a wider audience can be difficult. It must be said, however, that Chichester Festival Theatre does a remarkable job doing so despite highlighting the challenge! They have a very comprehensive, open and honest customer-facing page online detailing their green journey, as well as taking the time to produce a slick video to communicate their vision clearly.

Overall, it’s clear to see why Chichester Festival has been awarded UK Theatre’s Excellence in Sustainability title. It’s a pleasure to learn from an inspiring leader within the industry, and we look forward to seeing what’s next.

–

What kicked off your commitment to your sustainability journey?

Sustainability is one of our Core Values at CFT so it stands with us throughout all our decision making – we have a passion to be as creative as possible and to work hand in hand with protecting our Environment.

What’s the main benefit when working along with Theatre Green Book?

The main benefit of Theatre Green Book is that we can work collectively with theatres up and down the country to make sure we are supporting and learning from each other.

How are you engaging the whole team and customers?

We have just released our new video which connects our audience with our Theatre Green Book commitment. Theatre Green Book | Chichester Festival Theatre

We also have a Carbon Literacy Course which we offer to staff that has been specifically designed for CFT. We are very fortunate that so many staff members and audience members are passionate about this also.

What challenges have you faced and how are these used in your work goingforward?

We have faced so many challenges; I think that’s the point of this journey though is to overcome and learn from them? Every show is different, so we are constantly working together to make sure we embed a circular module into practice; so that we re-use and recycle and then make sure our sets/costumes and props go on to have a future life.

Is there someone you admire or would like to give a shoutout to in the

sustainability or theatre space?

I really must thank Justin Audibert [Artistic Director] and Kathy Bourne [Executive Director] who really make sure Sustainability is embedded not only in the organisation but our passion for it trickles into our freelancers and every person we work with.

What are you most looking forward to coming up at CFT?

Theatre Green Book is becoming part of our language here and that’s exciting, next year I’m looking forward to seeing the progression