We’ve signed up as an organisation to support Julie’s Bicycle Just Green Cultural Recover Plan and are working with the University of Liverpool on how we can be zero carbon.

Julie’s Bicycle is a London based charity that supports the creative community to act on climate change and environmental sustainability and we’ve been actively working with them since we built the new Everyman.

The plan includes a letter to government asking for:

1. The Cultural Renewal Task Force prioritise a rapid, just and green recovery, with designated representation on every sub-group. A just transition must be woven into all themes to ensure that those who have been left out, and the freelance creative workforce are taken fully into account.

2. The recommendation from the Committee on Climate Change that legally binding “net-zero policy [is] embedded across all levels and departments of Government” is adopted by DCMS and the UK put in place policies to meet its current fourth and fifth carbon budgets which we are currently not on track to meet. 

3. Public cultural compliancy and funding requirements are aligned to net zero requirements and promote biodiversity, and that larger organisations adopt explicit science-based net zero pathways. 

4. Any national Green Recovery plan is sector-specific to include the creative and cultural sector, with a focus on inclusion, place-making and communities, including strong incentives for space for nature. 

5. Specific R&D funds are designated for the creative and cultural community to benefit from interdisciplinary knowledge and partnerships which result in fit-for-purpose and future-proofed cultural services and products. 

6. A cross-cutting government Task force on Green Creative Skills and Curriculum Reform is created, with representation from Department for Education, Department for Enterprise, Innovation and Skills, and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs encompassing environmental and cultural expertise to prepare the future cultural workforce adequately. 
Find out more here.

In addition, we are working with Dr Stephen Finnegan of the University of Liverpool who is examining how climate change and the need to reduce carbon emission is impacting business. 

Dr Finnegan and our Chief Executive Mark Da Vanzo are collaborating to (a) measure the whole life carbon impact of the theatre and (b) develop a plan to reduce this impact to zero. The work includes an assessment of the “embodied carbon” due to construction and the “operational carbon” due to operation.

How and why did we undertake the study and what did we find? Read the report here.