The Little Green Book

Kate is discussing environmental impacts of making art and scientific research....

Artists and arts organisations have begun to think about the environmental impact of their work. This is timely, nowadays to get funding from Creative Scotland you need to be prepared to account for carbon emissions generated by your project. 

A group called Creative Carbon  has been involved in setting this up. However, many people think we need to go further than just counting what we generate. It is a challenge to try to go further, and really be prepared to change how we operate to reduce our pollution. For example, transport to events is one of the biggest carbon polluters in the arts.

Julie’sBicycle is an organisation dedicated to 'making environmental sustainability intrinsic to the business, art and ethics of music, theatre and the creative industries’. It provides a great online resource. Tabula Rasa is an example of an arts company who is working to change practice. It is an artist led project company that brings together people and organisations that are interested in collaboration. The projects move between art forms and across fields of practice. Tabula Rasa worked with Felicity Bristow of But ‘n’ Ben Bindery & Press to produce an imaginatively designed environmental policy. This was developed through Working the Tweed, a Year of Natural Scotland 2013 Project.

The Little Green Book is based on our environmental policy and reflects our activities as a small rural based organisation that runs arts projects and tours performances and exhibitions both near and far. It is a simple achievable policy to help us to start to actively reduce our carbon footprint.

We would appreciate if you shared this Little Green Book with others and used it as a basis for writing your own.

You can download a copy by following this link here.

Shouldn’t researchers - artists and scientists - also work out the environmental footprint for their proposals? Are there any moves from research funders to make this happen?