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Webinar & Video
  • Posted on October 17th, 2018

Webinar: Green Touring

Bright colourful lights shine across an audience

Julie’s Bicycle’s webinar on the environmental impacts and good practices of touring cultural work.

Julie’s Bicycle delivered a series of webinars this autumn as a part of the 2018-22 Arts Council Environmental Programme. Aimed at supporting National Portfolio Organisations in embedding environmental sustainability into their practice, the second of these free webinars focused on sustainable touring.

For many people, tours offer the only means to experience theatre, dance and performance in their local area. Given the increasing emphasis and cultural value of touring artistic work – and the resulting environmental impact – there is a need to develop a more sustainable model that embraces environmental practice.

This webinar explored what climate change means for tours, and how touring organisations can develop their environmental practice through developing a collaborative approach with critical partners across the touring supply chain. Using examples from the sector we’ll show you the benefits of adopting an environmentally conscientious approach to your tours.

We were joined by Louise Allen, General Manager of New Adventures whose UK tour of Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake beginning in September 2018, will be the first Creative Green Certified Tour.

Structure of the session

The webinar covered the following topics:

    1. Context: what does touring mean for climate and the environment – what are the impacts, challenges and opportunities?
    2. Practice: an overview of environmental practice including measuring and managing impacts, route planning, production and materials, travel, logistics and stakeholder engagement.
    3. Examples: what good practice is happening within the sector, and what benefits has it brought?
    4. Support: what resources are available to develop your green touring practice?
    5. Q+A

Speakers

  • Lucy Latham, Julie’s Bicycle
  • Louise Allen, New Adventures

About New Adventures

Pioneering and multi-award-winning, New Adventures is at the forefront of contemporary dance, touring to more UK and international venues and giving more performances each year than any other UK dance company. Re:Bourne, the charitable arm of New Adventures, invests in the future of dance and is a crucial mechanism for finding and nurturing the next generation of dancers and choreographers.

This year, New Adventures have been working with Julie’s Bicycle, pioneering a new approach to sustainable touring and helping co-develop the new Creative Green Touring certification. New Adventures are piloting this work with their Swan Lake UK Tour running from September 2018 – May 2019 which includes 23 tour dates.

Please note that we encountered some technical difficulties with audio during the recording of this webinar. We would recommend that you watch using closed captions for the first portion of the recording, and skip ahead where prompted.

Part of a series of webinars aimed at supporting Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisations in embedding environmental sustainability into their practice.

Image credit: The Roots Yard (2015) Photo: Samantha Milligan. Image courtesy: Shambala Festival