This webinar was designed as the kick off session for Creu Cymru Emergence, and was aimed at CEO equivalents and anyone else in the organisation who is leading on Emergence.
We covered:
- Pilot timeline
- Pilot goals
- Your role and responsibilities
- Introduction to:
- Staff engagement
- Understanding and monitoring environmental impacts
- Environmental policies and action plans
- Discussion
4. More than environmental
• Energy efficiency refurb -> Improved comfort for
staff and visitors
• Energy efficiency refurb -> Increasing potential
use of venue spaces e.g. new hires
• Staff commuting -> Staff save money (carpooling)
or improve health (cycling, walking)
• Sourcing locally -> Reduces emissions and
benefits local economy
• Gardens for biodiversity -> Engaging staff,
improve well-being
• Improve staff cohesion, morale and loyalty
• Improve reputation and relationships within and
beyond sector
5. Arts and Culture
• Have an impact far
beyond their own
footprint
• Enable us to
understand complex
issues
• Have a role to play in
social change
6. Pilot goals
• Venue CEOs taken a leadership role
• Successful engagement of staff, boards, LAs, etc
• All venues taken action – from basic to more challenging
• Carbon baseline for all venues with data
• Environmental policies and action plans
• Shared understanding of who is doing what
• New channels of communication and cooperation created
• Online knowledge bank and community of best practice
• Catalysed a shift in organisational culture and behaviour
7. …and more?
• All venues signing up to the Sustainable
Development Charter?
• Piloting props/sets/costume sharing?
• Undertaking a sustainable production pilot?
• Pooling insights on venue energy profiles and sub-
metering systems?
8. Pilot timeplan
Webinars 1-to-1s Events
Sep Introduction (CEOs/Leads) World Stage Design 13th Sept
Oct Sustainable Production 2nd Oct
(Prod)
Energy & Waste (FMs) 16th Oct
Initial
support
Nov Initial
support
Creu Cymru Conference 6th Nov
Carbon Trust @ WMC 26th Nov
Dec Sustainability Comms 4th Dec
(Marketing and PR)
Jan Board/LA engagement
Feb Board/LA engagement
Mar Board/LA engagement
Apr Stage & Sustainability (Artistic)
8th April
May Eval. Future Thinking 13th May
Jun Eval.
9. Pilot partners
• Cynnal Cymru – Awarding funds from the Welsh
Government’s Support for Sustainable Living Scheme
• Creu Cymru – Pilot lead
– Emma Evans, general project coordinator
• Julie’s Bicycle – Environmental Sustainability
– Catherine Langabeer, project director
– Lucy Latham, project manager
– Luke Ramsay, project support
• Cardiff University – Social Sustainability & Evaluation
• Steering Group
10. Pilot resources
• Webinar slides and materials
• Julie’s Bicycle IG Tools for carbon audit snapshots
• Smeasure.com for energy and water monitoring
• Creu Cymru Sustainability Toolkit (launching Nov 6th)
• Carbon Trust audits (for 10 venues, Oct/Nov)
• One to one support from Julie’s Bicycle
• Your pilot peers
12. Your responsibilities
• Oversee development of policy and action plan
• Lead on staff engagement
• Support other key staff to:
– Attend their webinar and any relevant events
– Provide data for carbon footprinting
– Feed into the policy and action plan development
• Facilitate and contribute to board/LA engagement
• Communicate with pilot peers and other stakeholders
14. 1. Staff engagement – why?
• Technology won’t “save us” – we need behaviour change
• Encourage innovation and unlock staff potential
• Attract and retain talent - people want to feel good about
the organisation they work for
• Increase staff motivation - employees who feel valued will
be more motivated
• Enhance your reputation - employees can be the best
ambassadors for a company’s environmental reputation
15. Staff engagement actions
• Treat staff engagement on this new topic as a project that
needs its own management
• Explore how to involve staff in decision-making and action
• Incorporate environmental action and monitoring into your
organisational structure
• Define clear roles and responsibilities
• Provide the necessary support and/or training
• Ensure senior management and governing bodies are on
board – prepare to make the business case
16. Staff engagement first steps
• Get inspired – check out some of our recommended links
to animations, films, posters…..
• Join the “2 degrees” sustainability network’s free
employee engagement group
• Create an opportunity to introduce your staff to Creu
Cymru Emergence within the next month
• Identify what resources you need to “tell the story” – a
presentation, or video, that will inspire and excite
• Consider a staff sustainability skill survey to follow on from
the introduction of the topic
• Read the supporting material in the Toolkit
18. 2. Understanding & monitoring
Decide which activities you want to look at e.g.:
• Energy
• Waste
• Water
• Production
• Travel
• Procurement
Identify how often it is feasible and useful to monitor
your environmental impacts
19. Data sources
• Energy monitoring software, energy and water
bills, meters, waste invoices, business travel
records, procurement records
• For waste, ideally you want to understand what is
created where, total volumes and how they break
down
• If you are local authority owned, find out what
information might be available, whether any system
upgrades may improve information, or what
methodology is used to estimate bills
20. In some cases you may have qualitative rather than
quantitative information, e.g. levels of organic and
locally sourced food in catering or an overview of your
key suppliers and contractors. This can also be useful
to help you identify where you should focus your efforts.
21. Understanding & monitoring –
first steps
• Ensure your FM can make the October 16th webinar
(and you are welcome to join)
• Find out from staff what data you already gather that
has relevance to environmental impacts
• Decide which impacts you can include for the pilot
and how frequently it is feasible to monitor them
• Read the supporting material in the Toolkit
22. 3. Policies & action plans
An environmental policy is a broad,
overarching statement of your environmental
ambitions, which provides a framework for day-
to-day action.
An environmental action plan is a detailed
and specific document that defines: targets;
actions; responsibilities and deadlines for
achieving environmental improvement and
reducing environmental impacts.
23. Environmental policy
Your environmental policy should describe your:
• Motivation for action and level of ambition
• Type of organisation and main environmental impacts
• Compliance obligations
• Commitments
• Communications approach
• SIgnoff and review process
24. Environmental Action Plan
Your environmental action plan should:
• Define your objectives and targets
• Develop actions to address your objectives
• Make the actions SMART -
Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and
Timely
• Explain what’s left out
• Identify how you will define, review, share and
communicate progress
25. Policies & plans – first steps
• Read the supporting material in the Toolkit
• This includes an annotated version of our Julie’s
Bicycle policy
• Share any actively used current policies and action
plans between pilot members
• Review sustainability compliances, awards and
standards and analyse what data they are
demanding and how they interact with each other
26.
27. Discussion
Key issues raised in the discussion were:
• How to engage really large staff numbers (eg 120+) especially
with long shift times and create a joined up approach. Think that
with such a large group we need management to set strong
principles and then let staff staff respond with their own
identified actions – to make it easy to manage. Will need a
patient approach – can’t do it all at once. (Chapter)
• Carbon Trust site visit has been useful – great they understood
arts buildings and identified opportunities straight away – it’s a
shame we couldn’t do more building investment during refurb in
2009 owing to financial constraints, but we’re interested to
revisit now. (Chapter)
• Finding that Local Authority can make it difficult to advance with
staff engagement as any initiative that requires investment is
dependent on LA support, this can slow green group activities.
Despite this, we have achieved a lot, including Green Dragon
Level 3. (St David’s Hall)
28. Discussion cntd.
• Using the lens of Sustainable Development has been a
really great tool to engage staff. Found that although at
first people didn’t have a good sense of what it meant,
once we started learning about it, and talking, we found it
is something we are doing all time – it’s been a great
framework for all our sustainability-related policies. Check
out the Sustainable Development Charter materials
(although note it is re-launching November 6th):
http://wales.gov.uk/topics/sustainabledevelopment/uksusd
ev/sdcharter/?lang=en (WMC)
• We are going to tender to get support for our
environmental approach and action plan as while we’ve
done some big things (e.g. solar panels), we haven’t done
everything, and staff are really busy. We need help to
prioritise. (Brycheiniog)
Notas del editor
Start recording the webinar!
Environmental sustainability is a business issue, not just an ethical oneIt’s about risk managementWe will see more extreme weather as a result of climate change and not just in far off places – our arts infrastructure could be vulnerable to increased rainfall, flooding, higher temperatures, etc. Extreme weather, changing climate also has a knock on effect on commodities, on resource availability which can also affect the bottom line, and is contributing to the high levels of inflation we’ve been seeing in recent years – again it’s affecting communities, it has real social impacts right here, right now.Legislation such as the UK Climate Change Act and the upcoming Welsh Assembly Future Generations Bill, which will make sustainable development the central organising principle of the devolved public service in Wales already recognise this. Environmental considerations are already embedded in energy and waste regulations presenting increased costs but also opportunities if you reduce energy or increase renewables, or reduce landfill. Voluntary initiatives such as the Sustainable Development Charter (which WMC and Sherman are already signatory to) provide tools to think through the issue through a broader lens, and also realise reputational benefits from aligning with progressive organisations across many different sectors.
Sustainable development balances environment with social and economic – look for synergies
Move Sustainability Comms? Feedback is December will be really busy as it is pantoseason – and that late January will be better.
Steering Group includes Deborah Keyser, CC Director, Nic Young, former CC Chair and Riverfront Theatre, Newport, Sarah Ecob, of Venue Cymru, Rhodri Thomas and Sara Wynne-Pari from CynnalCymru.
These are all provided for free – contact Julie’s Bicycle for more information.The CreuCymrumew website members area will support sharing between members, and will be launched in October, hopefully.
For example, Battersea Arts Centre use project management software called “Teamwork” to manage their environmental policy and action plan development and implementation.
Does the CreuCymru Emergence pilot group want to work on some of this together?
Posters from Do the Green Thing and The Carbon Trust
We are going to focus on energy and waste (e.g. webinar for FMs), but as some of you might not have much control over this, make sure you identify areas where you can make a difference now, and what might have to wait for a while.
For those who are currently undertaking the free Carbon Trust audits, you will already be addressing these questions. For the rest we will be picking this up with you in your 1 to 1s.
This is an excerpt from the annotated version of our policy – shared in the Toolkit.