Accelerator Programme: first cohort

In October 2018, ten organisations and consortia were accepted into the first round of the Accelerator Programme. These organisations, which will be developing new and innovative projects and initiatives throughout the course of the programme (taking place from October 2018 – March 2020) are introduced below:

• New Adventures, Norwich Theatre Royal and Sadler’s Wells, have formed a collaboration that aims to create a change in the relationship between touring companies and receiving houses, and hopes to develop a new blueprint for environmentally sustainable touring.
• Metta Theatre, Improbable, Blackpool Grand Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith, New Adventures, Young Vic and ATG, are another collaboration working on green touring models, aiming to be an incubator and resource network for sustainable thinking in the touring sector.
• Bow Arts and ArtsAdmin, a collaboration that aims to develop and introduce a circular economy approach to artistic process and production.
• Festival Republic and Boomtown, are looking into developing and testing at least two new products made from festival waste.
• East Street Arts, which wants to simplify the purchasing of utility services by providing wholesale priced gas and electric to the charitable and non-profit arts and cultural sector.
• London Theatre Consortium, who aspire to create a roadmap offering an action plan for driving forwards the consortium’s carbon reductions to achieve the 2025 UK carbon emissions target.
• Manchester Arts Sustainability Team (MAST), which aims to imagine what a zero-carbon city looks like and map the journey that the creative sector would need to undertake in order to support Manchester achieve its zero-carbon target.
• Philharmonia Orchestra, who are planning to develop a creative response to their environmental challenges, strengthened by a digital and outreach-led engagement programme connecting their practice with the Nine Planetary Boundaries framework.
• Talking Birds, whose idea centres around its new premises – an aspiring exemplar of a climate conscious, energy efficient and self-sufficient hub for collaboration. They aim to place environmental issues higher on the agenda of the arts and cultural sector in Coventry.
• We Are The Square (Southampton City Council), which aims to develop a collaborative approach to cultural networks supportive of the city’s environmental strategies.

Due to the number of submissions received and the phenomenal quality of their proposals, two more organisations have been invited to collaborate with organisations in the cohort whose projects share similar aims: HOME, which is planning to eliminate single-use plastics; and Opera North, which is working on developing sustainable touring models.

Funded by Arts Council England, the programme provides space, resources, time and expertise that hopes to stretch organisations’ ambitions and develop their ideas into tangible projects. The insights and learning from the Accelerator Programme will be circulated with the wider arts and cultural sector and will become a critical part of a roadmap for a shared vision for change.

Updates on their progress will follow, but in the meantime please follow our progress on social media: @ace_national @JuliesBicycle #CreativeClimate #JBAccelerator.