The climate crisis is changing everything we do, from how we live, to how we travel – and how we make theatre and film. If visual storytelling is to play its part in the vital conversation about our future then designers must learn to be sustainable in all they practice. How is our sector addressing this urgent challenge? What does ‘being sustainable’ mean for designers?
In this Quarter’s newsletter, APDG member Imogen Ross shares links and information about what is happening in the enviro- sphere for performance peeps. It is conference season and some fabulous think-tanks are happening across the island, focusing on the future of theatre, performance, diversity, inclusion and sustainability. The Australian Theatre Green Book is being launched at ITEAC, OISTAT is relaunching its Australian Design chapter at the ADSA conference in Adelaide and The Culture for Climate Symposium is connecting the dots with the National Theatre in the UK in Brisbane. A new book about natural dyes (and cooking) has been launched by a scenic artist interested in non toxic colourants. Julie’s Bicycle has recently teamed up with Creative Australia to run a 5 day Creative Climate Leadership intensive at Bundanon.
Whew – Spring has sprung!
IN THIS SEASON’S GREEN NEWS
- The Culture for Climate Symposium is happening in Brisbane on September 8th.The symposium will be preceded by a free online event on Thursday, 7 September (6-7pm AEST) with Rufus Norris, Artistic Director of The National Theatre in London and Paul Handley, Director of Production and Technical Production. Details for both events can be found on the RSVP form – click link.
- UK-based Sustainability advocates, Julie’s Bicycle are collaborating with Creative Australia (Australia Council) in running a very popular Creative Climate Leadership [CCL] course at Bundanon in mid September.
- Presented only once every four years – and for the first time ever in Australia in 2023 – the 2023 International Theatre Engineering and Architecture Conference (ITEAC’23) is one of the most diverse and internationally informed conferences in the last twenty years. You can engage remotely through the online collection of ITEAC ’23 segments and presentations, and engage in a hybrid mode via the live-streamed keynotes, or attend an ITEAC- hub in person. Sept 19-20
- Brisbane is the Australian hub of ITEAC ’23 , and will celebrate the launch of the two-day international conference with a one-day symposium combining talks and presentations on Australian theatre architecture on September 19th.Catch the launch of the Theatre Green Book Australia here. Adapted from Paddy Dillon’s successful UK Theatre Green Book, the Australian version will specifically address the unique nature and environmental challenges of creating theatre in Australia whilst aligning with an international ‘best practice’ framework.
- APAF 2023 will take place in Brisbane during the Brisbane Festival, September 13-15 at the Brisbane Powerhouse APAF is a biennial gathering for the national performing arts sector, including organisations and independents from theatre, dance, circus, and other live art forms.
- ADSA is the peak academic association promoting the study of drama in any performing medium. For the 1st time in 40 years, designers are holding their own Scenography and Performance Design working group. ADSA Annual Conference is held 27 Nov – 1 Dec, Adelaide.
- Catch the launch of the Australian chapter of OISTAT at the ADSA conference. OISTAT’s ScenoLab provides a space to share research and pedagogical advancements in all areas of design for performance, including spatial, set, costume, lighting, and sound, through to intermedial design practice and digital scenography.
- Books to read: From Café to Colourant This recently published booklet adds to the global conversation around more sustainable colourants and non toxic dyes as used by scenic artists and costumiers. It has many great recipes both for dye and for dinner!
- APDG Sustainability survey – We want to know how informed and motivated Australian designers are about designing in environmentally-sustainable ways, both on stage and screen. How supported do you feel by the companies you work with to make sustainable choices? What challenges do you encounter? What opportunities have arisen from using GREEN strategies? Tell us your experiences.
CULTURE FOR CLIMATE
First up – the Culture for Climate Symposium is happening in Brisbane on September 8th.
The C4C symposium will be preceded by a free online event on Thursday, 7 September (6-7pm AEST) with Rufus Norris, Artistic Director of The National Theatre in London and Paul Handley, Director of Production and Technical Production. Details for booking both can be found on the RSVP form. [click link above]
Join the newly formed Performance and Ecology Research Lab (P+ERL) for a full day of teasing out the challenges and exploring the opportunities for transitioning the Australian Performing Arts sector to sustainability. Leveraging off the recently released Culture for Climate Report, [a great read!] This Brisbane-based symposium will provide industry practitioners with the opportunity to engage in discussions about how the performing arts can make a difference in a climate-changed world. Acknowledging that ecological issues are driven by cultural narratives, the symposium recognises that the performing arts have a pivotal role to play in this transition.
C4C symposium offers engagement with a wide range of international leaders on the subject, including Chantal Bilodeau from the Arts & Climate Initiative (New York) and Marianne Lavoie from Écoscéno (Montréal).
The Performance and Ecology Research Lab (P+ERL) is in association with the Creative Arts Research Institute (CARI), the Climate Action Beacon and Griffith Institute for Educational Research (GIER) at Griffith University, QLD.
Culture for Climate Symposium Supporting the transition to sustainability in the performing arts
When: Friday 8 September, 9.00am – 5.00pm
In Person: The Ship Inn Function Room (S06), Level 2, Sidon Street, South Brisbane
Online: See Above
CREATIVE CLIMATE LEADERSHIP
During September, UK-based Sustainability advocates, Julie’s Bicycle are collaborating with the newly renamed Create Australia (Australia Council) in running a Creative Climate Leadership [CCL] course with a 5 day intensive at Arthur Boyd’s studios at Bundanon.
What is Creative Climate Leadership?
CCL empowers artists and cultural professionals to take action on the climate and ecological crisis with impact, creativity, and resilience. Participants will deepen their understanding of the climate and ecological crises, understand and develop the role of culture and creativity in responding to these challenges, and emerge with a toolbox of approaches and practical solutions for transformative action.
This year’s candidates work in areas as varied as music to ecology and theatre to justice. Many theatre sustainability advocates and live production designers were chosen to participate as part of the first cohort. Arts on Tour maven Antonia Seymour (who launched the Arts on Tour Green Touring Toolkit in 2022) is going, as well as Bryony Anderson, well known puppetry designer and maker, Grace Nye-Butler (Theatre Green Book Australia) and Dr Tanja Beer, the author of Eco scenography. Other well known performance makers attending are Dr Jen Rae (Refuge – Arts House) and Sēini ‘SistaNative’ Taumoepeau, an interdisciplinary Artist, Storyteller & Founder of OceaniaX, Pacific Wave & LELEI Wellness.
ITEAC UK/AUSTRALIA
Presented only once every four years – and for the first time ever in Australia in 2023 – the 2023 International Theatre Engineering and Architecture Conference (ITEAC) is one of the most diverse and internationally informed conferences in the last twenty years.
ITEAC’23 will be linking the three main hubs in London, Bogota and Paris and smaller sites (like Brisbane) in various other countries around the world. You can engage remotely through the online collection of ITEAC ’23 segments and presentations, and engage in a hybrid mode via the live-streamed keynotes, or attend an ITEAC- hub in person.
Brisbane is the Australian hub of ITEAC ’23 , and will celebrate the launch of the two-day international conference with a one-day symposium combining talks and presentations on Australian theatre architecture.
UK: Tuesday 19th and Wednesday 20th September 2023.
Australia: Tuesday, 19 September 2023 | QUT Kelvin Grove, Z9 Creative Industries Precinct, Level 5
ITEAC 23 will consider three themes driving dramatic change in theatre practice and theatre space:
- Environmental Sustainability
- The Digital Revolution
- Serving Communities
Topics include designing theatres for communities, sustainable engineering, new architecture, environmental sustainability, reaching new communities, building for the digital revolution, supporting culture and sustainable shows.
AUSTRALIAN PERFORMING ARTS FESTIVAL (APAF)
APAF 2023 will take place in Brisbane during the Brisbane Festival, September 13-15 at the Brisbane Powerhouse
APAF is a biennial gathering for the national performing arts sector, including organisations and independents from theatre, dance, circus, and other live art forms. Delegates can expect three days of insightful and relevant speakers and facilitated conversations, networking and socialising, and excellent catering. APAF prides itself on centering artists in the conversation and responding to the current issues, needs and opportunities that are impacting our sector right now.
APAF includes broad discussion about cultural development and artistic creation, presented by Theatre Network Australia, the peak organisation for contemporary performing arts practitioners and companies.
Several exciting APAF keynote discussions around sustainability are planned:
Drawing on decades of experience and her impressive breadth of work with UK company, Punchdrunk, independent artist and choreographer, Maxine Doyle (Salamander, The Burnt City, Sleep No More) delves into her expansive independent practice, collaborative processes, creative leadership, and ongoing commitment to centring audience experience in the creation of large-scale work(s) across genre, form and context.
Currently in Australia for the Brisbane Festival, Maxine has collaborated with legendary designer Es Devlin, LX designer Ben Hughes and costume designer Bruce McKinven to create Salamander – a dance-theatre visual feast.
Salamander sees a warehouse transformed into a fully immersive, climate-fiction dream-like world through light, sound, design, and movement. Es Devlin’s labyrinthian and kinetic sculptures live within a flooded landscape which is inhabited by characters desperate to make a change before it’s too late.
Artists Jackson Castiglione and Yuhui Ng-Rodriguez will later deliver a workshop focused on sustainability and alternative business models for independent artists and small arts businesses.
Following on from Collaborative Futuring In A Climate Crisis, APAF delegates will identify the major local and global drivers of change affecting the learning, making, and sharing of art in a climate emergency.
Led by Sydney University’s Clare Cooper, participants will take these drivers and collaboratively create stories of probable, potential, and preposterous futures.
AUSTRALASIAN DRAMA STUDIES ASSOCIATION (ADSA)
ADSA is the peak academic association promoting the study of drama in any performing medium. For the 1st time in 40 years, Designers are holding their own Scenography and Performance Design working group at the conference.
The Scenography and Performance Design Working Group’s aim is to solidify the growing body of Australasian researchers specialising in scenography and performance design. Many designers are actively involved with international research networks, yet lack a home where they can share our achievements and advance the national dialogue on performance design. This new working group will provide a national space for this sharing, to connect those investigating by the power of design in performance, to find avenues to collaborate, co-publish, and support one another in our research.
Working Group sessions will be a mix of:
- Invited speakers (curated by the co-conveners) on timely and relevant topics;
- Group discussion on issues or opportunities facing the field;
- Paper presentations and/or informal sharing of research projects; and
- Networking and developing opportunities to co-research.
The launch of the Australian chapter of OISTAT will be one of the highlights, and a welcome return – it has been nearly 20 years since Australia was a member country. OISTAT is a global network for theatre practitioners celebrating design, technology and architecture in live performances.
OISTAT’s ScenoLab will provide a space to share research and pedagogical advancements in all areas of design for performance, including spatial, set, costume, lighting, and sound, through to intermedial design practice and digital scenography. All designers, educators and researchers whose work intersects with the concerns of scenography, be it questions of space, time, audience, technology, aural, visual, material, and environmental aspects of performance environments are welcome to join.
There was an informal OISTAT Australia meeting at PQ in June 2023 – a round table discussion talking about issues that affect designers more broadly – APDG members Christina Smith APDG and Matt Scott were present and represented Victorian designers. Eamon D’Arcy APDG and Richard Roberts APDG along with APDGreen Conversations host Imogen Ross have joined the QLD-led steering committee, spearheaded by Tessa Rixon from QUT.
For more information on the ADSA Scenography and Performance Design working group and the OISTAT launch, contact Tessa Rixon (tessa.rixon@qut.edu.au), Tanja Beer (t.beer@griffith.edu.au) or Madeline Taylor (madeline.taylor@qut.edu.au)
BOOKS TO READ ON THE COUCH
This recently published booklet adds to the global conversation around more sustainable colourants and non toxic dyes as used by scenic artists and costumiers. It has many great recipes both for dye and for dinner!
At this time when there are so many positive provocations for us to nudge our consumption patterns towards a more circular economy – I appreciate the concept behind this book – which brings sustainability into the public entertainment space in a way I’ve not seen before. The style of writing is disarming and refreshing – and I felt empowered and enthused by Kennedy’s writing – not at all lectured at. In my decade as a Stage Manager in theatres across the UK from Birmingham Rep to the RNT in London, I’d not really encountered ecoscenography, or the use of food waste to create colourants for drapes, flats or cycs. Would love to see one of the big theatres trial the use of these terrific pigments for set and costume for a ‘Sustainability Season’
Suzie Tingley
HAVE YOU TAKEN OUR APDG WORKING GREEN SURVEY?
We want to know how informed and motivated Australian designers are about designing in environmentally-sustainable ways, both on stage and screen.
How supported do you feel by the companies you work with to make sustainable choices? What challenges do you encounter? What opportunities have arisen from using GREEN strategies?
Would you support a centralised stock warehouse? Do you mind other designers reusing elements of your designs in their productions?
This survey will help us understand what your current GREEN strategies and concerns are, as we all transition towards a more circular economy.
THERE IS ALWAYS SO MUCH MORE TO THE GREEN CONVERSATION…
If you are interested in adding your professional design voice and suggestions to an APDG Sustainability Protocols group or promoting green initiatives in future Green Conversations, please send an email to Imogen Ross or Rebecca Whittington to offer assistance, suggest topics of research and point us towards members who are doing great things in the field of sustainable design.