This spring we hosted a competition for Green Arts Initiative members to find creative, innovative and exciting idea springing up across the Green Arts community. Now we’re revealing our community winner!

The Competition

Earlier this year, Creative Carbon Scotland was a runner-up in the Sustrans Scotland ‘ Scottish Workplace Journey Challenge‘, coming runner-up in the category of organisations with less than 20 employees. As a runner-up, we won the opportunity to donate £50 to a charity of our choice! We discussed it as team, and decided we wanted to use the donation to help support the sustainability work of the cultural sector.

We decided to run a small competition for the members of our Green Arts Initiative – all Scottish-based cultural organisations committed to reducing their environmental impact – asking for submissions of ideas which tackled environmental sustainability in a small or a big way!

The Winning Idea

We had some really interesting and innovation entries, but after a serious deliberation process in the Creative Carbon Scotland office (voting rounds, people defending their favourite submissions – it was almost a European election!) it was Lisa, Green Champion at The Beacon Arts Centre, whose idea triumphed:

“The Beacon are looking for some seed-funding, quite literally! We want to buy bean seeds to supply to local schools, encouraging them to participate in a green class project. Once the seedlings have grown into ‘mini beanstalks’, we will host a green arts workshop and showcase for all local schools involved at the end of the year, in-line with our panto, Jack & the Beanstalk!”

Although it was a close call, there were a few reasons why we chose this idea from those submitted:

• We liked that their green work was integrated into their creative programme: identifying green opportunities within regular or special programming is a great way to align sustainability with the identity and activity of your organisation!
• We thought it was an innovative way to engage audiences: combining schools engagement with activities such as growing and the concepts behind the production and the process sounded like fun! Public-facing initiatives have the potential to impact our wider society’s approach to climate change.
• We thought it was something which could inspire others: although each organisation is distinct, many of the planning cycles and traditional seasonal events (e.g. the panto) are common the cultural sector, or sub-sectors. Thinking ahead and seeing where green arts can fit in in the coming months and year is a great way to make it ‘green business as usual’.

You can keep up to date with the progress of the show on the Beacon’s website.

Thank you to all those Green Arts members and Green Champions to entered the competition! There was such a range of fantastic ideas, and it was hard to choose. We’ll be in touch if we think there are other ways we can help to make them a reality.

Our Green Arts Initiative

The Green Arts Initiative is a networked community of practice, made up of over 225 cultural organisations in Scotland committed to reducing their environmental impact. Free to join, the community is working on everything from reducing their carbon emissions, to engaging staff, to producing artistic work that tackles climate change head-on.

We provide monthly updates for members on the news, events and opportunities which support their work as Green Champions, as well as programming our annual Green Arts Conference (this year on Tuesday 8 October 2019) and providing year-round advice. Find out more (and join!) on our Green Arts Initiative project page.

The post Green Arts Competition: Winner Announced! 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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