In our latest green news, we told you that we’d been awarded four stars (out of five), from Julie’s Bicycle Creative Green Assessment. You can read that blog here.
This report, which details recommendations for improvement as well as celebrating success, recommended that the Gate makes explicit links in our Green Gate Policy to the UK Government’s Climate Act and Paris Agreement. We thought this was pretty important too, so we’ve done just that.
Here’s our revised Green Gate Policy. Do have a read, and let us know what you think:
@gatetheatre #GreenGate
Green Gate, our sustainability policy:
Founded in 1979, the Gate is a 70 seat, flexible-space theatre above the Prince Albert pub in Notting Hill, renowned for its reputation for training the artists and theatrical leaders of tomorrow. Its core mission is about sustaining not just its own precious and intimate experience for audiences and artists, but also about helping to sustain the wider theatre industry by acting as a training ground for future generations. Under Artistic Director Christopher Haydon, the Gate’s programming continues the theatre’s fine reputation for staging international work – and now specifically presents pieces that interrogate the forces that shape our societies, asking our audiences to think more about their place in, and responsibilities towards, our world.
The Gate Theatre, like many small-scale arts organisations, is continually aware of the concept of sustainability: operating in an environment of limited resources but aiming to celebrate the highest quality of standards regardless. The Gate’s missions and aims, as outlined in our Business Plan 2012-15, centre around sustainability – how to protect, maintain and increase the quality of our work; the quality of our audiences’ experiences; and the quality of our artists’ experiences which often come at a key time in their emerging careers.
As such, we see environmental sustainability, Green Gate, as intrinsic to our mission: The Gate is here to feed current and future audiences and artists – we recognise that we and all businesses and individuals have the responsibility to work in an environmentally stable way in order to ensure the continued health of our planet for those future generations; the Gate has been a nexus for communication between London and the rest of the world ever since it was founded – we now aspire to be a platform for social debate and awareness raising, and this includes communicating the need for environmental sustainability from us all in order to support the global community. As amenity prices rise, the Gate must also take action to manage those costs to avoid a negative impact on the company’s finances.
The Gate will continue to keep in line with local, national and international developments surrounding Climate Change and in particular the work of COP21 and the Creative Climate Coalition. The Gate will pledge to work in such a way as to strive to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees celsius, this century, and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase even further, to below 1.5 degrees celsius.
(NB: COP21 refers to the 2015 Climate Talks: the term ‘COP’ stands for Conference of Parties. ‘Parties’ is a reference to the (now) 196 signatories of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, as it is called. The Climate Change coalition is spearheaded by Julie’s Bicycle, this coalition originated as a call to action for the Creative Industries represented at COP21.)
In line with the Creative Climate Coalition, the Gate pledges to; take action ourselves to make our work more sustainable; speak out and up, using our voices to accelerate positive change; jointly support one another through sharing campaigns and knowledge; and using our creativity to contribute in finding and scaling solutions.
Our ambition is that the Gate must have an impact larger than its intimate black box. Whilst we recognise that we have limited financial means and limited control on our buildings, we hope that our legacy can be environmental, as well as artistic.
THE GATE’S ENVRIONMENTAL IMPACTS
We will continually reassess our environmental impacts in these keys areas:
– Buildings: energy, water use and waste in our theatre, office and storage facility
– Production: materials, energy use and waste
– Office activities: printing, IT, supplies and services, waste
– Travel: business travel, audience travel
THE GATE’S ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENTS
We are committed to these key areas for reducing our impacts:
– Understanding, measuring, prioritising and improving the Gate’s environmental impacts, ensuring compliance with environmental legislation as a minimum
– Reducing energy use within our control
– Reducing water and waste water use within our control
– Avoiding waste from our activities and productions and increasing reuse and recycling as a key way to ‘green’ the Gate within our limited financial means
– Engaging and training staff and our Board on environmental issues, in line with our Equality Action Plan to enable all staff to work and develop to their best
– Communicating with and engaging the Gate’s audiences on environmental issues, in line with our Audience Development Plan to bring our audiences closer to our work.
– Assessing all options for business travel, Offsetting our carbon footprint as far as is practicable.
This Green Gate Policy is reviewed on an annual basis by the Gate’s Board, and updated as and when necessary.
This Policy is supported by a Green Gate Action Plan complete with targets, timelines and named people responsible for delivering them, which is also reviewed and updated on an annual basis by management and the Board.
This Green Gate Policy is endorsed by:
Joseph Smith
Chair, Gate Theatre, Notting Hill
2015 – 2018
