- Posted on July 15th, 2025
Wise Children – Staging Sustainability: Reusing Costumes and Greening Productions
For Arts Council England and Julie’s Bicycle’s annual report 2023-24, we feature over 50 practical examples of cultural organisations taking climate action including in depth case studies like this one. Check out the full interactive report here.
This case study was written by Wise Children – a touring theatre and training company. They outline their journey to embed environmental ambition into impactful action, detailing their step-by-step approach guided by the Theatre Green Book, focusing on the reuse and repurposing of costumes, and implementing practical actions to reduce their carbon footprint in future productions.
About Wise Children and their sustainability journey
Each new production brings with it new energy and the excitement of something that has yet to be experienced or seen, but we are also acutely aware of the impact and implications that come with making a new show.
For some time, at Wise Children, we tussled with turning our environmental ambitions into impactful actions across the organisation. We are a small team with big dreams, often working at capacity, and we were overthinking the process. We wanted to jump to working perfectly sustainably but the scale of the change that entailed was overwhelming us and, in fact, hindering us getting off the ground.
Led by the Theatre Green Book, we broke our ambitions down into steps relevant to the way we work. Initially, we decided to simply embed the ethos, making sure our teams understood the goals and were onboard with keeping sustainability at the forefront of discussions throughout the process. We found that many a win was already being made by giving the sustainability conversation more of a platform. In turn, by seeing the wins on stage, we have found ourselves invigorated, motivated and driven to increase changes in the way we work; pushing ourselves to be more conscious of how we can lessen our impact environmentally and more up for the challenge of how to do this without lessening artistic vision. Learning the benefit of celebrating successes, confronting the barriers in manageable steps and improving bit by bit.
Breathing new life into existing clothes and costumes
The Little Matchgirl
Our 2024 production The Little Matchgirl, sought to reuse, alter and mend as many of the existing costumes as possible. We fitted, reworked, repaired and breathed new life into corsets, jackets, trousers and skirts. What we did have to buy came second hand: we spent joyful hours trawling charity shops in Frome (where we performed the show) and surrounding areas, finding coats, shoes, jackets and a few Christmas jumpers. Materials, fittings and trim were sourced locally, to support independent shops in Frome, and cut down on deliveries and CO2.
Wuthering Heights
The Leader of the Moors’ costume was handmade entirely from second-hand and vintage fabric. The skirt was made from a variety of pieces found at antiques markets: fabric from old quilts, embroidered belts, cushion covers, old upholstery and vintage fringe. The pockets were made from two old curtain swags. The jacket was made from an old mattress cover and worn-out blanket. It is covered with antique and vintage buttons and brooches, all of which were sourced from local markets and charity shops.
Read more about the collaboration, creativity and costume-making for Wuthering Heights.
Blue Beard
Blue Beard saw more than two thirds of the costumes on stage come from a second hand source. The main new makes for the production were our six nun costumes, and these were handmade from 100% ethical and organic fabrics.
Learnings and Practical Actions
Following the Blue Beard tour, we held a ‘sustainability debrief’, to discuss the challenges and successes, and to recognise pitfalls and ways to mitigate them in the future. This has led to a brand new set of actions which we are implementing to lessen our carbon footprint on our next production, including:
- Building relationships with local shops and services which may be useful during rehearsal/production periods. Engaging with second-hand shops that might agree to accepting returns, for example.
- Creating an excellent and well-catalogued rehearsal kit of props, costume, wardrobe, making and technical kit for use in R&Ds and rehearsals to lessen purchases and deliveries during devising processes.
- Moving our storage closer to our rehearsal space to improve access to existing stock to promote reuse.
- Creating a robust catalogue of WC assets and stock to be shared with creatives and production staff to promote reuse.
- Including our communities, both employees and local, in collating second hand stock and costume.
- We have a renewed understanding of the importance of being transparent about our journey and highlighting the positive changes which are put in front of audiences.
- We understand that we have a platform and that audiences want us to use our influence to help facilitate change. We understand the importance of engaging with our industry peers; sharing, learning and being part of discovering what the future of productions and touring looks like.
As we embark on pre-production work for our upcoming productions and tours, we are more confident and motivated to drive our green initiatives forward, knowing that we will not always get it right but that each ‘win’ makes a difference, particularly in helping shift mindset towards working more sustainably across the organisation.
Header image: Blue Beard – Wise Children – Credits: Steve Tanner