Global Grooves is working on incorporating a small hydro turbine into its venue, The Vale, and engaging audiences with this project through programming, training, and direct participation. They aim to reduce the organisation’s environmental footprint whilst paying homage to the industrial past of their venue, involving the community and reflecting the project through art.

They encouraged the community to take a central role in designing and co-creating the turbine. Global Grooves are not only invested in skills development for the participants but they also encourage the participants to bring their own knowledge, and to lead events around the project from nature walks to workshops on bike generators.

They codevised a digital skills week to engage young people that led to the group coding their own website for the neighbouring large scale hydro power station where people can learn about the station and check its hydro generation in real time. They included an artist commission as part of The Vale hydro project, with the aim to engage different audiences as well as explore the intersection between art, sustainability and nature.

Jelly is a nomadic organisation with years of experience of making use of odd and empty spaces with few options when it comes to sustainability. Despite having limited control, they have found ways to manage their current space through switching to 100% green energy, opting for a smart meter and using low impact infrared heaters.

To make the space more welcoming, they created self-built artist studio pods which can be readily disassembled and reconstructed, with the help of U-Build. Their resourcefulness is also reflected in their approach to supplying water to the space. The empty shopping unit had no running water and instead of opting for adding plumbing, they decided to buy a mobile sink that could travel with them to future venues.

Jelly chose for the sink to have clear water carriers to help the artists visualise and reduce the water consumption. Alongside their day-to-day work, Jelly has set up a sustainability forum for arts and heritage organisations in the area to share knowledge, support each other and develop ideas.

In collaboration with artist Henry Driver, LEVEL Centre commissioned Water Portals – an interactive digital journey exploring the microscopic world of water and raising awareness about the pollution in our waterways.

They invited audiences to discover the beautiful microbes that live in our rivers, lakes and seas, and to understand the crucial roles the audience could play in creating a healthy world.

This piece also included community participation encouraging audience members to take a pledge on actions they could take to protect our waters. The installation provided an opportunity to highlight how these important microbes are at risk from climate change, and what simple things we can do to make a difference.

Over the last three years, Multistory has been delivering Green Roots, an urban greening arts and cultural programme of artist and community-led activities across three of Sandwell’s towns. The programme responds to the needs and challenges of each town as identified by local communities, aligns to Sandwell Council’s Urban Greening scheme and encourages dialogue and skills development on topics of nature and biodiversity.

As part of the programme, Multistory has delivered projects including a community-grown wildflower meadow and a nature conservation training and skills development programme in the use of tools with Sandwell College SEN students. For another one of the projects, Multistory partnered with Bostin’ Arts and local independent shops in Wednesbury to create bespoke planters filled with a variety of plants outside each shop, enhancing the high street with greenery.

Community groups attended drawing, growing and mindfulness workshops and made woven obelisks for the climbing plants in the planters. Multistory also delivered workshops themed around greening, nature and memory, with activities like observational drawing of plants and seeds, creating natural dyes from vegetables, printing and smallscale planting. The project not only enhances the visual appeal of the town but has also fostered a sense of community, environmental consciousness and empowerment to voice concerns among residents and businesses, paving the way for future collaborative projects aimed at transforming Wednesbury into a more vibrant and sustainable town.

Oily Cart’s international collaboration with Australian theatre company Polyglot explored working on sister productions of When The World Turns. This involved creating the show first in Australia and then remaking it in the UK with a new cast, based on the Australian blueprint of the show, with 50/50 creative input from both organisations.

Sustainability was at the centre of their planning with the focus being on limiting personnel travel to the minimum required and consideration for design by working with leading eco-scenographers in both Australia and the UK. With the set containing approximately 400 living plants, Oily Cart established and communicated a Manifesto of Care to set out their plans for ensuring that all living beings in their show are cared for.

Each version of the show used distinct materials and plants to reflect the local environment and needs of the audience. This show both prioritised sustainable touring practices as well as helped foster a deeper understanding and connection with the planet through its message and sensory experiences.

The Royal Ballet and Opera (RBO) have identified their suppliers and contractors as their main source of emissions, accounting for around 80% of their total emissions. In preparation for setting Scope 3 emissions targets, RBO conducted a spend analysis to estimate emissions based on their purchases and started to survey the suppliers that they spend the most money with, gathering data on environmental policies, accreditations, targets, energy sources, transportation and training.

The results showed that a large number of companies that had not started to look at any of these areas or did not consider this a priority. To address this, RBO set up a workshop for their suppliers aimed at promoting collaboration, sharing of best practices and common challenges and understanding how RBO can help them become more sustainable.

As a result of the workshops, RBO has developed a standard set of questions for suppliers to address sustainability issues. Additionally, the workshop has established networks among suppliers, with many committing to calculate their carbon footprints annually. Internally, RBO has already started to implement some of the recommendations made by the suppliers and plan to hold these workshops twice yearly to foster an ongoing dialogue.

For the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (SBT), adaptability and resilience has been required on multiple fronts as it works to both conserve the centuries-old properties whilst also making them accessible for the public to explore.

In 2022, record temperatures across the UK had a catastrophic effect on the existing planting in the Golden Garden, with many of the plants unable to recover. This sparked the Gardens’ team to research what plants could be more resilient to extreme temperature fluctuations and prolonged periods of wet weather.

Their research took them horticulturally to the Mediterranean, looking at bronze fennel and Turkish sage, alongside those that would have been familiar to the Shakespeare family and mentioned in his work, including rosemary and an olive tree. SBT addressed challenges such as free-draining soil to avoid excessive moisture and drip irrigation during drought. Despite dry periods, the irrigation system was only used four times in 2024, showcasing sustainable practices in action.

An area of focus for The Poetry Society is engaging young people in poetry to increase understanding around biodiversity loss and climate breakdown. Across 2023-24, their online community for young writers, the Young Poets Network, ran three environmentally themed writing challenges, in which 634 young people aged 7-25 wrote 1,183 new poems on subjects including perceptions of animal cuteness, and finding peace and improved mental health through nature.

There were opportunities for young poets to perform their work live, and some of the most inspiring poems were published online and in print by The Poetry Society, where they reached a range of audiences, from global communities to thought leaders. The Poetry Society also works in formal education and skill development, where they have created resources mapped against the curriculum designed to encourage pupils to use poetry as a tool to explore biodiversity.

Each resource features a recent poem about nature, written by a young poet from their youth programmes. By putting writing by young people at the forefront of projects for young people, they aim to demonstrate to school-age audiences that the issues explored in the poems are relevant to the pupils’ own lives and their voices are valued.

As part of Croydon’s year as London Borough of Culture, Zoo Co Creative established a library of access equipment that could be loaned out free of charge to make events more accessible without having to purchase whole sets of new equipment.

The Access Library was a great success, with sets of items being loaned out 35 times, benefiting a large number of event attendees as well as providing a unifying moment between disability rights and the climate emergency. Partnerships with Croydon cultural organisations were strengthened through this project, and Zoo Co Creative provided free consultancy services to further accessibility initiatives.

The Access Library also led to further sustainable practices within Zoo Co Creative by using the storage space to process their items more sustainably and sharing unused production items with the community.