Environmental Sustainability

Working together to create a low carbon future through responsible management of the Festivals’ environmental impact.

Greening the Festivals
Posted on Monday, August 1, 2011 - 15:42

Working across twelve Festivals and hundreds of venues across the city, the Edinburgh Festivals have great potential to help make Edinburgh the world’s greenest Festival city. With over four million attendances each year, we have a unique opportunity to help residents and visitors to Edinburgh manage their environmental impacts responsibly. And as cultural events, bringing people together to enjoy new experiences, we're perfectly positioned to help change attitudes to the environment.

The Festivals have the strength in terms of reputation and impact to create a powerful platform to focus Scottish and international attention on ways of achieving a sustainable future - through reducing our carbon emissions, managing the ways we affect the environment, and contributing to the global environmental discussion. We're focussed on the three pillars of sustainability, finding ways to successfully integrate social, economic and environmental demands.

Environmental Sustainability Strategy
Posted on Monday, August 1, 2011 - 15:41

In 2011 the Environment Group - made up of Festivals Edinburgh staff and representatives of each of the 12 major festivals -  developed a robust new Environmental Sustainability Strategy to guide our work:

VISION

By 2020 Edinburgh’s Festivals will be the world’s leading green Festivals taking place in a Festival City, by taking responsibility for their environmental sustainability and pioneering initiatives to reduce their environmental impacts

MISSION
To ensure the environmental sustainability of Edinburgh’s Festivals through working together and individually by:

  • Embedding environmental practice into the core business of the Festivals
  • Understanding and communicating the carbon profile of the Festivals by measuring, reducing and reporting on their direct and indirect environmental impacts
  • Exploring, developing and promoting the role of the Festivals, the arts and the cultural sector in changing public and industry  behaviour through practice (research), innovation and communication

To deliver these objectives, we're undertaking a wide range of activities, working with partners across the environment and cultural sectors. In 2010 we launched the Green Venue Initiative (GVI), a pilot programme working with Festival venues to monitor, manage and reduce environmental impacts in a strategic and cost-saving way, and encouraging public promotion of venues' environmental work and goals. In 2011 we are partnered with Edinburgh University to conduct research into artist and audience impacts, with a view to launching an Artists and Audiences Impact Reduction programme (AIR) in 2012.

The Festivals see the work they are doing as important in contributing to the ambitious climate reduction targets of the Scottish Government. We are offering a framework that can be delivered across the creative industries, building local capacity and developing tools that are suited to Scotland’s particular cultural ecology. Through the work we are doing we hope the local and global reach of the Festivals will allow us to influence opinion and behaviour on a significant scale.

Green Venue Initiative
Posted on Monday, August 1, 2011 - 15:40

Because more than 40% of carbon emissions in the UK are caused by buildings, with the Festivals collectively inhabiting nearly 300 venues throughout Edinburgh, we have developed the Green Venue Initiative to support Edinburgh’s venues in reducing their energy consumption and helping them adopt more sustainable business practices.

Through working closely with venue managers, delivering technology and resources, running workshops and seminars, negotiating eco-procurement contracts, and providing on-site assistance we're enabling venues to monitor, manage and reduce their environmental impacts, and to develop a strategic approach to sustainability.

In 2011 we launched the Green Venue Guide, a freely available interactive webtool and publication. This offers advice and resources to venue managers, includes a monitoring system for providing an overview of environmental work, and begins a rating and certification process for venues committing to sustainability.

Partners
Posted on Monday, August 1, 2011 - 15:38

With Julie’s Bicycle, the lead UK agency on reducing carbon emissions in the creative industries, we are carrying out an approved approach and methodology to support engagement, measurement, reduction and disclosure of emissions, as well as illuminating and working towards wider sustainability practices. Through a three year pilot programme, using Julie’s Bicycle’s Industry Green tools we aim to scope the emissions profile of the Edinburgh Festivals estate, and track progress in emission reductions, while implementing new ways of working.

Creative Carbon Scotland brings together a powerful partnership from the creative and knowledge sectors in Scotland in a timely and important project: to prepare for and adapt the cultural sector to the new, low-carbon environment resulting from the Scottish Government’s ambitious Climate Change Act. Festivals Edinburgh is the lead partner in the project, delivering its pilot programmes, research, innovation focus, and promotion of best practise. We are working primarily with the Federation of Scottish Theatre, alongside the Visual Arts and Galleries Association, Edinburgh Centre for Climate Change, and Theatre Trust, as well as expert research advisors.

Our environmental initiatives are in part funded by the Scottish Government and by Creative Scotland's Creative Futures scheme.