LIVE PERFORMANCE PRODUCTION DECLARES is a global petition uniting all strands of the Live Performance Production industry. It is both a public declaration of our planet’s environmental crises and a commitment to take positive action in response to climate breakdown and biodiversity collapse.
The crises of climate breakdown and biodiversity loss are two of the most serious issues of our time. Live Performance has been branded the ‘eco-vandal of the arts’ with lavish sets, global tours and energy consuming venues. Sets are scrapped after tours which rack-up hotel nights and transport miles. Audiences travel for hours to see stars who fly across continents. As one of the sectors that contributes to art-forms with some of the greatest social and political influence, Live Performance Production must lead in promoting the transformation to a circular economic model by demonstrating positive measures in its own practice.
For everyone working in the presentation of live performance, operating a place of entertainment or supplying productions, meeting the needs of our society without breaching the earth’s ecological boundaries will demand a paradigm shift in our behaviour. Together with our creative partners, performers, patrons and clients, we shall need to run our buildings, create our performances, source and manage our resources in order to serve our communities as indivisible elements of a larger, constantly regenerating and self-sustaining system.
The research, technology and solutions exist for us to begin the transformation to a circular model now, but there must be a collective will. Recognising this, we are committing to strengthen our working practices and redesign our business activities, operational processes, use of resources, organisational policy and overall governance in order to create and present live performance in a way that has a more positive impact on the world around us.
We will seek to:
- Raise awareness of the climate and biodiversity emergencies and the urgent need for action amongst our partners, collaborators, stakeholders, customers and supply chains.
- Advocate for faster change in our industry towards circular design practices and a higher Governmental funding priority to support this.
- Establish climate and biodiversity mitigation principles as an inclusive and highest priority measure of our industry’s success: demonstrated through awards, prizes and listings.
- Share knowledge and research on an open source basis.
- Evaluate all new productions against the aspiration to contribute positively to mitigating climate breakdown, and encourage our partners, collaborators, stakeholders, customers and suppliers to adopt this approach.
- Upgrade, reuse and re-purpose existing production resources to achieve extended use as a more carbon efficient alternative to limited use and new build approaches whenever there is a viable choice.
- Include a natural resources budget in all production, product planning or design development in order to reduce both embodied and operational resource use.
- Adopt design, production management or product development principles with the aim of creating productions or products that embrace the framework of a circular economy and wherever possible are restorative.
- Collaborate with partners, collaborators, stakeholders, customers and suppliers to further reduce production waste.
- Accelerate the shift to reduced consumption and the use of regenerative practices and materials.
- Minimise wasteful use of resources in the presentation of live performance both in quantum and in detail.
This declaration was inaugurated by:
Association of British Theatre Technicians, Sustainability in Production Alliance
And is supported by:
Supporter 1, Supporter 2
To become a supporting organisation please contact: [email protected]abtt.org.uk
We hope that every UK live performance supplier, producer, venue, practitioner, student and educator will join us in making this commitment.
To sign, practices must provide the email address for their CEO, Chairperson or appropriate Board Member. Approval will be sought via this email before the company name is added to the declaration.
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