Jazz Wood: How much and what do you do on the ‘living unknown soldier’ project?
Ben Todd: Huge amount of partnership brokering and PR a few days per week for about 2 months.
Total cost to Arcola was less than £2000 after sponsorship etc.
JW: I know you have solar panels, fuel cells and a biomass boiler, what else do you have in place to reduce the venue’s carbon footprint?
BT: We don’t have solar or bio mass yet.
Changing suppliers.
Reducing lighting power consumption.
Re-use / recycle.
JW: How much energy do you get from the solar panels and biomass boiler?
BT: At present none, eventually all of it.
JW: Do you feed the boiler the canteen’s waste food? Paper? What about the emissions from burning the fuel?
BT: No it is composted. Eventually we will feed it old sets and local builders waste. Emissions from burning are a problem, but since we are using waste which has been produced already and it is all wood-based which captured CO2 when it was growing it is sensible to consider it carbon-neutral.
JW: Does the fuel cell match up to their usual power supply or does it make demands on how the show is lit, temperature storage, does it need a refill, can it handle sudden demands for power, is the rest of the electrical system the same or is it specialist. Can any Joe Bloggs buy one/use one. Is it dangerous?
BT: The most important benefit of the fuel cell is that it motivates lighting designers to reduce power consumption to under 5kW. A saving of 60% or more.
JW: Do you encourage your staff to come to work in an energy efficient way? If so how? How successful has this been?
BT: Not especially. Most staff use public transport / walk anyway.
JW: When did you start ‘thinking green’ and what prompted you?
BT: It was a very long time ago.
Have spent about 10 years learning/working/thinking about sustainable living/technologies.
Can’t remember what prompted it other than enjoying the natural world and seeing the madness of destroying it so quickly, particularly given the terrible consequences for people.
JW: How has government legislation regarding green issues influenced the project?
BT: Government policy (and indirectly the existence and threat of legislation) has made it possible. This is particularly true of the local government policy of Mayor Ken Livingstone.
JW: What government support is there with this sort of action? What government support do you think there should be?
BT: There is significant government support for the large capital projects such as installing fuel cells.
There is limited local government support (again through initiatives of London Mayor Ken Livingstone).
We need much more support (primarily financial) if we are to make the changes necessary to prevent extreme climate change.
JW: What has been your biggest problem? How did you solve it?
BT: Lack of money, partnerships.
JW: What have the advantages been? Such as extra funding, more volunteers etc. Is there anything which this project gained from that other non eco friendly projects don’t?
BT: New partnerships, on an equal footing, with organisations much larger and more established than Arcola Theatre.
Favourable support from industry partners.
Additional support from high calibre volunteers .
JW: What has surprised you?
BT: How quickly and dramatically we made an impact with such limited resources.
How much support and goodwill we have received from our partners.
JW: Is there anything you would like to add?
BT: In my view the key factors in the arts doing their part in driving sustainability are:
Act now. Lack of resources does not prevent us from delivering arts projects, they should not prevent us from delivering sustainability projects.
Keep focus on projects which are interesting and motivate people to change rather than annoying them with trivia and paperwork.
Work in partnership and support each other.
Work to integrate the knowledge and skills of the arts in motivating and engaging people in to sustainability projects in other sectors.
Realise that there is significant benefit to be gained from delivering projects which satisfy multiple objectives – it is well established that youth/community engagement can be delivered as part of art projects and attracts additional funding sources, the same is true if art & sustainability projects.
