This post comes from Creative Carbon Scotland

This June Creative Carbon Scotland hosted the event ‘Going Green: Good for the Screen’ at the Edinburgh International Film Festival to tackle such questions. Ben Twist, director of CCS, along with guest-speakers Aaron Matthews, Industry Sustainability Manager at BAFTA, and Mairi Claire Bowser, from ethical set-management company Drèsd, discussed the environmental challenges facing the industries and the tools and resources that are being developed or which need to be developed for these to be overcome.

Environmental challenges facing the film industry include:

• How to transport all necessary people and equipment to and from location
• How to power film sets, including equipment, catering facilities, and caravans
• What to do with sets and props after production.

With limited budgets (especially in television), speed is of the essence and cost and convenience are the name of the game. Transport is done as easily as possible, regardless of emissions; sets and props are often discarded into landfill (as storing costs are so high); power is provided by fossil-fuel generators. Environmental concerns get left by the wayside.

Fortunately, this is starting to change. Aaron Matthews has been working on the development and uptake of Albert, a free carbon-calculating tool tailored to film and screen productions. Used at the pre-production stage, it takes only 20 minutes to complete and clearly identifies major sources of emissions, and hence key areas for carbon reduction.

The four major UK production companies (BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Sky) were involved in its development, which required a level of openness and data-sharing not usually seen between rival organisations: a refreshing example of the common good being placed above personal interest. They’re also ensuring its uptake: the use of Albert is now a compulsory stage in pre-production at Sky, and will soon be at the BBC also. This will hopefully achieve the aim of normalising sustainability concerns and integrating them into standard practice.

Whilst the knowledge provided by Albert is necessary for effective action to be taken, it is not sufficient. It’s important that productions are supported and facilitated in greening their activities. To this end, Mairi Claire Bowser argued for the creation of a central sustainability hub in Scotland. This would be THE go-to place for questions regarding material resource reuse, energy and carbon management, water stewardship, etc.

It could also provide training to bring productions up to speed on sustainability issues, as well as facilities such as low-energy set and prop storage, and the centre for creative re-purposing and innovative recycling. This will save lots of material from landfill, whilst also preventing further resource exploitation when the sets and props have to be remade. Such a base would have social and economic benefits too as smaller productions, such as student and indie films, could benefit from the greater resources available to larger productions. The wealth could be shared.

Collaboration and communication are key if a central sustainability hub is to be created, and at the moment it is very much at the ideas stage. However, as we have seen with Albert, such collaboration is possible provided there are enough people with the will to make a difference. And such people are certainly around, as positive changes are beginning to be seen across the industry. A few example include:

• BAFTA is switching to 100% renewable energy
• Shepperton Studios are trialling set-repurposing
• Ealing Studios are installing plumbed water to sets, allowing water bottles to be easily refilled.

The film and screen industries have a long way to go, but tools such as Albert and a Central Sustainability Hub have the potential to make a big difference. As do members of the audience, which included filmmakers, students, and members of Screen Academy Scotland and Creative Scotland who we hope found the talk enlightening and thought-provoking.

For more information about resource to improve sustainability in the film and television industries please click here.

To find our more about green festival initiatives follow our summer #GreenFests blog!

Image: Vancouver Film School, Creative Commons License

The post Going Green: Good for Screen appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.

In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.

We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.

Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:

Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.

Go to Creative Carbon Scotland

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This post comes from Creative Carbon Scotland

Glasgow 

Performance artist and director of the UNFIX Festival Paul Michael Henry led the discussion in Glasgow.

UNFIX (10-12^th July) is a festival of performance and ecology, involving live performance, dance, film, installations, workshops and debates. It understands ecology to be broader than the environmental sense in which it is normally taken, and instead considers it to be the many ways in which we are interdependent on each other, our surroundings, our bodies and psyches. Ecology is an environmental concept, but it is also a political, economic, and cultural concept that affects our mental and physical beings.

Indeed, UNFIX conceives of individuals, with their mental and physical beings, as microcosms of the whole. We are the Earth; by protecting the Earth we are protecting ourselves. To this end, Paul led us through various exercises exploring our sense of self and its relation to the physical surroundings. A particularly interesting one involved turning out the lights and moving at a constant pace out of our chairs, onto the floor, and across into the seat to our right over the course of five minutes. This made us exceedingly aware of where we were relative to each other and our surroundings, as well as exploring our sense of time – surprisingly not many made it into next seat before the end!

Art as a Language

We also discussed the idea of art as a language. The same topics can be discussed in multiple different languages and are hence conceived of in a multitude of ways. Each language reflects a different approach. The same can be said of the different arts. Each artist will approach a topic in a different way, in their own language so to speak, and art can therefore act as a catalyst for discussion, debate, and the formation of new ideas and perspectives. We intend Green Tease events to help facilitate such discussion, to provide a network in which a wide range of approaches and ways of thinking about climate change and sustainability in artistic practice are supported.

Edinburgh Green Tease

ArtCOP was the main topic of discussion at Edinburgh’s Green Tease, where Assembly Rooms and Church Hill Theatre Green Champion John-Paul Valentine led the discussion. Also present at the event were John-Paul’s colleague Will, the curator of Gayfields Creative Spaces John Ennis, several members of the Creative Carbon Scotland team (including director Ben Twist, project developer Gemma Lawrence, and blogger Kitty Dutton) and artists Alice Cooper, Katrina Martin, Venus Grelin, Hannah Imlach, Caroline Malcolm, Jaimie MacDonald and Mairi Claire Bowser who work in multiple disciplines including design, upcycling, and visual art.

In particular we were focusing on the ArtCOP Schools Art Competition, in which children and young people will be encouraged to creatively engage with topics in sustainability and the United Nations climate change discussions, happening at the 21^st Conference of Parties (COP21) in Paris this December. The variety of expertise and experience in the room fuelled the development of the project as we discussed both conceptual issues, such as the theme and nature of the competition, and practical issues, such as how and where the work is to be displayed. A veritable ‘Community of Practice’ in action.

It was decided that, rather than a competition, it would be better as a Schools Art Project culminating in an exhibition of the work created throughout. This works better with the government’s Curriculum of Excellence as well as logistically.

We also decided that an appropriate theme was circular economies i.e. those which aim to keep resources in use for as long as possible by reusing, recycling, and rejuvenating products and materials (as opposed to the traditional linear system of produce, consume, and dispose).*

Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Image: https://www.st-andrews.org/leaflet101012

The slogan ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ captures the essence of circular economic principles, whilst also providing various nuclei around which schools could base artistic projects. We were informed by Alice, who is from Australia, that they also include the instruction ‘Refuse’, to encourage people to consume only what they need. Sustainable consumption is not just about being responsible when consuming, but about questioning the need to consume in the first place. We felt that this added an interesting perspective for schools to engage with; one that is often lacking in the UK dialogue.

*For a quick and accessible explanation of the need for a circular economy and the principles upon which it’s based, see Annie Leonard’s excellent short documentary titled ‘The Story of Stuff’ (watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM).

The post June Green Tease Reflections appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

———-

Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.

In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.

We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.

Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:

Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.

Go to Creative Carbon Scotland

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