Bow Arts' Green Blog

How a London based arts educational charity works towards being a more sustainable organisation

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Five is the magic number, apparently: A visit from the Arts Council

Last week members of the Bow Arts Green Team hosted a visit from Ian Rimmington, sustainability lead at Arts Council England, and his colleague Sophie Merriman. The five of us sat in our cosy Carmelite Café and had a good old yarn about what sustainability might mean and I left the meeting feeling energised by being involved in this young area of practice.

As I’ve suggested in earlier posts, one the most appealing aspects of sustainability is its co-dependency on other disciplines and areas of practices and we gravitated towards this characteristic during the meeting. For example, Dawn pointed out how the Equality and Diversity action plan she is working on seems to feed into the sustainability agenda through a shared desire of both to promote equity and fairness. Likewise, this ability to intersect between disciplines is why I am excited by art education, which goes way beyond the scope of simply delivering a set of skills; as one child succinctly put it, ‘art is not one little thing, it's a million things in life’. Like art practice, sustainability is constantly being framed and reframed in a variety of contexts which I think can allow us to re-imagine the present, the future and our role within those.

We talked about a couple of five-legged models through which we can interpret and implement sustainability agendas and how these might be relevant to Bow Arts’ approach. Ian mentioned the five capital model of sustainable development. There are a few different versions of this, but Forum for the Future’s includes manufactured, financial, natural, human and social capital. The simple premise is that all five need to be nurtured and not depleted to ensure sustainable development. We’ve aimed to take a holistic stance in our statement on sustainability and think that this breadth aids us in engaging stakeholders with differing agendas as well as securing the future of the organisation. We talked about how the education work that Bow Arts does generates social capital, for example, providing a hopefully relevant service to local schools through framing our work in response to their needs and developing long term partnerships.

We also discussed the role of sustainability in promoting wellbeing – a key ingredient of human capital - and the fact that, as well as being untenable in the long run, buying more stuff is proven to make us unhappier. The ‘five ways to wellbeing’, pioneered by the New Economic Foundations suggests that in actual fact learning, being active, giving, noticing and connecting are all resource-light and cheaper ways to achieve a sense of wellbeing.  With reference to our education programme again, we speculated on the impacts that our CPD programme for teachers might have on participants’ wellbeing through, for example, learning through doing, connecting with other teachers and artists, and noticing things anew through reflection. Ian recommended one of the most powerful ways to capture these things is through stories told directly by those involved; indeed much of the evidence for these kinds of impacts is anecdotal and takes place in informal chats throughout and after sessions. As we develop our methods through which to communicate what we do, we hope to ensure that those stories are told: watch this space.

Lydia Ashman, Education Officer, [email protected]

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Trying

As you’ve probably already heard, this year we’re becoming green. Indeed, sustainability has become something of an office mantra in the build up to this weekend’s Open Studios. Green, green, green… Our conscience is white, our deeds are green.

Or are they?

With only three days to go until the much anticipated day of our Open Studios, we’re taking a moment to reflect on what we’ve achieved and what we could have done better. The deep breath before the plunge, if you will.

During our recent efforts to act more sustainably, we've had to acknowledge that being sustainable involves many different lines of approach and that carrying out the one is certainly proving to be more difficult than carrying out the other. These last few weeks have taught us that our responsibilities concern both social and environmental interests and that acting upon the former comes decidedly more naturally to us than acting upon the latter.

As we’ve explored before, ‘giving back’ to your community makes up an important part of sustainability. This year we’ve truly - and we mean truly – done our best to do just that. Rather than source our suppliers and contributors according to competitive rates, we’ve decided to look no further than home. In an attempt to interact with our immediate surroundings, then, we’ve aimed to engage as many local businesses and charities to be part of our Open as possible.

Local involvement during this year’s Open Studios stretches from areas such as entertainment, right the way over to drinks and food. Whilst London based bands Cook and the Case and The Vamp will be playing on Saturday night, the East End community group Bubble Club are sending down four of their DJs on the Sunday afternoon. What’s more, the beer we’ll be serving is brewed only four miles down the road in Hackney by London Fields Brewery. We'll also be selling organically-sourced Butler's Gin which, again from Hackney, will be making an equally short journey down to our studios. Still closer yet is the East End Women’s Institute who, located less than two miles away from Bow Road in Bethnal Green, will be supplying us with cake and tea. Beating the lot in terms of proximity however, are Bow's local Three Bees who will be providing some delicious vegetarian eats on the Saturday eve. Oh, and then of course we mustn't forget our very own Michael Needham, the Carmelite Cafe's proprietor, who will be serving all sorts of local treats sourced from local and independent suppliers.

By sourcing our products from local and independent organisations in this way, we’ve both reduced the need for transport and any resultant environmentally harmful emissions and successfully supported small and growing businesses. If anything it’s been easier, and certainly a pleasure.

Becoming environmentally sustainable by contrast has been slightly more complicated. Where to begin? Well, that’s exactly what we’ve been asking ourselves. Recycling and keeping waste to a minimum seemed to be an attainable aim. So that’s where we started.

Last week we told you about our artist swap shop where we encouraged artists to avoid the production of unnecessary rubbish by alternately swapping unwanted goods amongst each other. What's more, for the Open itself we have purchased a number of recycling bins and created some advisory signs which will hopefully not only help us discard bottles and cups appropriately but also educate some of our visitors on the rights and wrongs of recycling.

For a while we also deliberated over whether, instead of using plastic cups, we should purchase vegware beakers - eco friendly catering disposables - which are both compostable and sustainably-sourced. Eventually, however, we agreed that the concept might still be confusing to some and should therefore be revisited for next year’s Open. Which is why, for now, we have opted for a compromise and have decided not to give you any cups at all. If you’re drinking beer that is (it comes in bottles). Drinkers of wine and soft drinks will be given fully recyclable cups. Moreover, Saturday's food (which does not come in bottles) will be served on biodegradable plates with biodegradable cutlery!

You see, our attempts at attaining environmental sustainability are slightly more humble than our attempts at attaining social sustainability. Nevertheless, we've seen a marked improvement from last year, no doubt helped by having Green Team representation throughout the entire planning process. We have also learnt a great deal from this year’s experience and are already busy planning possible improvements to next year’s Open. 

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The Swap Shop

In line with National Recycle Week (which is happening right now by the way -18th to 24th June!) we did our bit to spread the recycle message last night…

With only one week to go until our Open Studios event takes place we decided it was high time to give the place a good clear up. Since that involves not only our Bow Road courtyard but also our artist studios we’ve all had to roll up our sleeves and pitch in – artists included. Yes, the prospect of absolute orderliness for what will presumably last for all of one blissful week is rather exciting to us. However, the prospect of endless amounts of rubbish and waste isn’t. Unfortunately, as anyone who doesn’t happen to be a chronic hoarder knows, tidying up also often means throwing stuff away. Something we’d ideally like to keep to a minimum. Torn between order and sustainability and unwilling to sacrifice either of the two, we decided to host a Swap Shop. Here’s what happened:

Throughout the week prior to the swap artists were given the opportunity to drop off old or unwanted items from their studios in our courtyard; the only limitation being that the items could potentially be useful to others. By Thursday we had accumulated some really good finds. To name but a few, we acquired a marvellous battleship-grey washing-up bowl….

 …a spotless, still wrapped canvas….

                   …and this magnificent, Egyptian blue workbench…

                    Admittedly, since anyone could take what they fancied, whether they had contributed or not, it technically wasn't a swap. Verging on pillage rather than exchange then, we’re thrilled to say that almost all of the donated items were successfully rehomed by the end of the night and the bin was left feeling ravenous.

A rough total of twenty items were swapped last night, which is a great achievement for our first Open artist swap shop. We'd love for this to grow in the future but are also willing to accept that our artists’ exemplary resourcefulness may simply prevent them from having anything to throw away in the first place.

Watch out for any future swap shop events we might host – the more people attend and contribute the more waste we prevent. In the meantime, for more information and ways in which you can participate in Recycle week visit the Recycle Now website.

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Just how green are we?

It’s hard to think about heating systems when it’s 17 degrees outside, but that was on the agenda of last week’s Green Team meeting as the sun shone.  As you may remember, Bow Arts received news back in January that our bid for Arts Council funding for gallery refurbishments had been successful.  The grant had included funding for other capital developments at our Bow Road site, not just for the gallery, but the monies allocated to the gallery did not include installing a heating system.

If you have ever been to the Nunnery gallery during the winter months you will know that it is COLD.  Heating is provided by several oil filled radiators plugged in (with any luck) ahead of opening.  They take the worst of the chill off, but having just been through one of the most prolonged cold periods in recorded history, they did little to help.

And from an environmental point of view, this is a very inefficient way of heating the space.  Now that improvements are being carried out in the gallery, what could and should be done?

We started looking at various green heating systems – biomass boilers, thermal exchanges, solar panels – you know the kind of thing.  But, at present, we don’t have the expertise, the funds or, to be honest, the manpower to embark on such a project.  However, we have a small window of opportunity to make some improvements to the energy profile of the gallery and we are leaping at the chance to make changes where we can. 

A decision has been made to fundraise for a conventional heating system, ie AAA rated boilers and good insulation, etc, which will be compatible with a future integrated environmental control system for the gallery.  

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It’s a WRAP – waste at the Open

Our Green Team have been continuing efforts to ensure our Open event is more sustainable and we think it’s working. As we outlined in a previous post, dealing with waste is a priority for us. So we’ve been looking at WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme), an independent not-for-profit organisation which looks to reduce waste and encourage the smarter uses of resources. They have produced the fantastic UK Events Roadmap which includes information about their vision of Zero Waste to Landfill for the events industry by 2020 and practical toolkits to support short, medium and long term planning of waste reduction in events.

We used this as a basis for discussing overarching aims and practical strategies for waste management as well as the broader sustainability agenda for the Open at our Working Group meeting. We decided that our overall purpose was:

To make the Open a more sustainable event, year on year

To raise the profile of sustainability at Bow Arts amongst our stakeholders

 And then came up with the following practical ideas:

·        Holding an artist swap shop before the event to encourage re-use of resources rather than simply throwing away the things they don’t want.

·        Food and drink: encourage our caterers to use recyclable or biodegradable cutlery and plates by including this on the brief. Introduce a ‘bring back’ scheme at the bar whereby punters pay a deposit for a cup or glass which they can claim back at the end of the night.

·        Recycling: have visible points for recycling using specific bins. We’ve done a bit of research and there are plenty of options such as buying cardboard bins which can then be recycled themselves after the event or hiring additional bins from Tower Hamlets local authority.

·        In addition, we’re looking at the most effective ways to promote green travel options to our visitors and local beer and soft drinks suppliers.

WRAP point out the need to record and analyse the sustainability impact of your event to track progress, so we’ll be keeping an eye on the amount of waste we produce this year to use as a benchmark for following years.  We’ll also be asking visitors about how they got to the Open. WRAP also emphasise the importance of communicating our sustainable aims and actions to all our stakeholders – so in addition to the blog, we’ll include information in our artist and general newsletters and publicity specific to the event.

In short, we’re getting there! And we’re also taking the long view; once we’ve gathered information and implemented actions this year, we’re confident we’ll be able to make the event greener each year.

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The Carmelite Café: Sustainability on our doorstep

We’ve mentioned the Carmelite Café in this blog before, but we thought we’d say a little more about how Michael Needham, Carmelite’s proprietor, has created a small beacon of sustainability through his approach to running the café.

When I sat down to talk to Michael about what it meant to him last week, it quickly became apparent that sustainability permeated many aspects of his life, but almost unwittingly. In addition, the lines between his identity both as an artist and café proprietor are blurred and these play a huge role in informing how he has approached setting up and running the Carmelite café and his good sustainable practices.

As we posit on our webpage, sustainability presents itself in many different guises. Careful management of resources is key to this; we live in a paradoxical age where resources are becoming scarcer and yet cheap goods with short shelf lives and quick-fix solutions are readily available to us.  Artists are often characterised by their resourcefulness, which can be driven by an economic imperative, but also the vision to see the potential in things that others have discarded as useless or obsolete. There are parallels with how an individual setting up a new business must also demonstrate good business sense and thriftiness to ensure its future.

So instead of opting for purchasing expensive (or cheap) new goods, Michael has sought and found opportunities to give existing things a new lease of life through the Carmelite. The café itself is based in a former convent – a beautiful old building which houses our Nunnery Gallery – curating exhibitions which link world class contemporary art with local heritage and community. He has kitted out the café with second-hand furniture and crockery and re-used textiles to make cushion covers and a large curtain for the doorway. He’s also looking into giving away his old coffee grounds which can be used for a myriad of things including fertilising your plants, scrubbing your hands clean and even making new furniture.

Recycled chair installation

The notion of ‘giving back’ to the community as part of your business model has also been cited as an important part of sustainability. Interacting with his surroundings and developing relationships is something that comes naturally to Michael as a visual artist with a socially engaged practice and is obviously an important characteristic of a café owner. As well as building up a strong customer base, he nurtures other kinds of relationships with those around him; local women bake the cakes he sells and the (for-sale) plants which brighten up the alley are provided by Core Landscapes of Core Arts, a Hackney-based charity which helps people who experience mental health issues to fulfil their creative potential. He’s provided a platform for Bow Arts studio artists to sell work. He seeks artists from the locality to display work in the café, and in the latest exhibition, Strike, Alistair Gordon uses locally reclaimed wood from the old Bryant & May Match Factory as a canvas.

Michael also has a strong commitment to sourcing high quality products from local and independent suppliers like himself, from his Nude Espresso coffee and Pie Cart pies to the design work he commissions – reducing the need for emission-producing travel (he and his croissant supplier, Little Pedlar, meet on bikes at 7.15am in Shoreditch to exchange the goods!) and supporting small and growing businesses.

Once he’d told me about all of the above, Michael sat back and concluded that, though he hadn’t really thought about it before, he supposed he was living sustainably. Which is even more inspiring – sustainability really can come naturally, and in this case its practices contribute to creating an inviting and unique space for people to gather, which many have contributed to and which also seeks to give back.

You can visit the Carmelite café, say hello to Michael and potentially pick up some coffee grounds between 10am and 5pm, Tuesdays to Sundays. Follow @beanbeard on Twitter

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Greening the Open

The Green Team have been plotting our next moves – and one area of focus is to make our flagship annual open studios event more sustainable. Since they are at the heart of the success of the Open, we hope to combine this with our aim of working more closely with artists to raise awareness and encourage them to take steps to be greener.

We’re at the early planning (paperless, of course) stages but already have a few ideas about how we can go about this:

Waste and recycling is a biggie for us; there are lots of glass bottles and disposable cups and plates thrown away at the Open, so we want to ensure recycling options are very visible and, as far as possible, we use recyclable goods. In addition, there’s always a big clean up before the event so we hope to recycle as much as we can as part of this.

Looking at our suppliers: we buy in alcohol and soft drinks and have external people providing food. We are looking into the logistics of using local business with positive green credentials.

Sustainable travel: we hope to encourage visitors to walk, cycle, get the train or bus to see us by signposting options like Boris Bikes and nearby pleasant walking and cycling options.

Shouting about sustainability: we’ve got green team representation on the Open working group to ensure it’s kept high on the agenda. We’re thinking about profiling sustainability at the event itself through display or participation. We’re planning to keep the blog updated about how this goes for us.

As always, we’ve done a bit of research into greening events, such as this case study from Julie’s Bicycle on the Isle of Wight festival, which provide great initial ideas to get us started. We'll let you know our progress...

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Bow Arts take on the Climate Change Challenge

Always keen to be involved with positive initiatives, Bow Arts signed up some time ago for the Climate Week Challenge 2013, Britain’s biggest environmental competition.  The organisers reckoned some 130,000 people would be taking part, none of whom were allowed to know exactly what the challenge was until Climate Week itself (4-10 March).

We had chosen to do the one hour challenge (rather than the whole day) so all Bow Arts staff gathered over lunch during Climate Week to get down to task.  The day arrived and the challenge was announced...

“Design the ultimate eco-home”

The first question to answer was – who would live in our house?  A family, an individual, like-minded singles?  We decided that as an arts organisation to draw on our expertise so that our inhabitants would be....... yes, of course – artists!  And our Head of Property told us quite quickly that the most efficient way to provide a home for someone is to re-use an existing structure, rather than build from scratch.  So there we had it.  We would have to find an old building, which could house 20 individual artists in a Live/Work environment (no travel to work and no carbon emissions!).

We set about deciding on the property’s green credentials and came up with the following:

Ideally the site would have at least an acre of land – half an acre for our windmill to generate electricity and half an acre for food production. 

One central heat exchange boiler would efficiently heat the structure, with all the obvious insulation in place. 

Solar panels on the domed roof which could turn to maximise sunlight. 

Water collection and filtration systems in place to minimise our need to draw from the mains.

The 20 flats would be located over five floors, with four flats on each floor.  Entertainment would be provided by a communal cinema and the in-house gym would be rigged to generate power too. Would each flat really need a kitchen with all the associated fittings and power requirements?  No – one kitchen per floor. 

And here was the crux of it.  Our inhabitants would have to share.  Share space, share food, share utilities! This links really well to the notion of collaborative consumption, as outlined by Nesta here, which promotes sharing all kinds of resources such as skills and knowledge, as well as physical objects.

The hour was up but we learned two very important things.  Firstly, the model for this type of sustainable living is already in existence - Homesteading.    And secondly, sustainable living is about more than utilising the latest shiny green technology; it’s about looking beyond our individual needs and working together to change our consumption and lifestyle habits.

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Is it easy being green?

We’re not sure it’s easy being green but it is surprising the changes that can be made once the mind is attuned.  We are happy to report that the Staff Energy Awareness campaign that we held pre-Christmas has had a couple of positive knock on effects. 

Our Business Manager suggested we move over to green payslips, ie email versions rather than hard copy.  All staff were happy to go along with this, agreeing that they would be far easier to file apart from anything else! 

Going paperless across all our services is something we are now aiming for. Our contracts have been successfully paperless in Education and we  are now investigating paperless contracts for our Property team.  We’ll let you know how this progresses. 

And last week, staff changes meant that we had to source three new desks to replace a couple of big old beasts. We researched the costs and found that there was not much difference between buying new and second hand.  We decided to go with second hand in line with our sustainability principles.  The company we used will be re-using/recycling the old desks.

So whilst it’s not always easy, hopefully the above examples show that there are some simple changes you can make to make the world a little greener.

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Welcome to the Future

We were delighted this week to hear that we are to receive Arts Council funding to the tune of £320,000.  The monies will go towards a programme of capital works, including improvements to the studios, gallery and offices.  It affords us a great opportunity to upgrade facilities, but with it comes the responsibility of ensuring that our delivery of grassroots arts and cultural services to artists and residents in East London is strengthened – and sustainable.

Sustainability was a very strong consideration in our bid to the Arts Council.  The potential, via the capital upgrades to studios, to ease our carbon footprint and consequently the pressure on upwardly spiralling costs, will help us to keep our spaces affordable.  The improvements to the gallery will serve us in improving and extending our cultural offer in some of the country’s most deprived wards.  The improvements to office space will result in synergies that allow us to develop our business model.  The funding is a great vote of confidence in our work to make East London a place where great art happens and is appreciated, not only for our current artists and local residents, but for future creatives.  All in all it is a very exciting time to talk sustainable development. 

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@juliesbicylcle @ace_national The work to embed sustainable development into the Bow Arts culture has begun.  Take a look at our new webpage...  

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Looking both ways: the close of our Energy Awareness Campaign

After 7 weeks, the Bow Arts inaugural Energy Awareness Campaign came to a close yesterday and to mark the occasion, the team got together to review and reflect on it.

We reported on how much money we saved as a result of turning off the heating for a day during our woolly jumper competition (£1.32 per radiator so roughly £8 for the day), discussed the performance of the eco-buttons (the verdict was that they didn’t suit everyone but did raise awareness about putting your computer to sleep when you leave your desk) and introduced everyone to the Bow Arts carbon audit snapshot provided by Julie’s Bicycle.

Everyone was on tenterhooks as the woolly jumper competition winner was announced; our property assistant Marcus won some locally brewed beers for his fantastic effort.

And throughout the campaign, we’d been sending out green facts and tips so we held a quiz ‘How green can you go?’ to test the team’s knowledge on these. The winning group received some fair trade chocolate as their prize.

Finally, we wanted some ideas about where to go next! So we gathered some feedback on what people thought the best thing was about the campaign, what could be improved and practical steps for moving forward. Positive thoughts included cross departmental working on a theme that affects us all – proving again that sustainability connects -, the range and timing of events to keep awareness up, and the fun factor. Many people agreed that in moving forward, we really need to begin to engage our artists and other stakeholders more; swap shops, communicating tangible information about energy usage and an artist bike fix were mooted as practical ideas.

So, whilst the campaign is over, our work is not. We plan to spread the energy awareness further in 2013, so watch this space as to our next moves and (hopefully) successes.

Proud winner of the woolly jumper competition

Smiles all round: Quiz champions receive their choccy

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How we fixed our Carbon Targets (2)

So – we had our carbon emission figures for 2010/11 and 2011/12 (see post below as to how).  Now we needed to decide on our policy targets for carbon reduction.  Just what kind of carbon reductions should we, and indeed could we, commit to?

Many people will have heard of the fact that the UK committed to reducing carbon emissions subsequent to the Kyoto agreement.  The Climate Change Act was passed in 2008 committing the UK to cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2050.  The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme (the CRC, formerly the Carbon Reduction Commitment) is the vehicle by which this is monitored and is a mandatory cap that applies to large non-energy-intensive organisations in the public and private sectors. 

So what about smaller organisations?  No mandatory targets exist and best practice is still being developed.  It’s at times like this that you turn to your friends.  Julie’s Bicycle, again, was a great help.  In October 2010, Julie’s Bicycle published the Green Visual Arts Guide, part of a series of guides for the creative industries.  The Guide provides a ‘how-to’ for visual arts organisations, individuals and galleries interested in greening their activities. Julie's Bicycle was commissioned by Frieze Art Fair on behalf of the Mayor of London to write the Guide, which maps the greenhouse gas emissions of London's visual arts sector.  It provides practical recommendations for visual arts organisations to support the Mayor of London’s Climate Strategy for reducing London’s carbon emissions, which stand at a 60% reduction by 2025 using 1990 as a baseline.

Of course, we didn’t have any carbon measurements for back in 1990 – we didn’t even exist then!  We could only confidently use 2010/11 as our baseline.  So, as we were dropping into the middle of the Mayor’s reduction plan, we chose to set a target of a 30% reduction by 2025 using 2010/11 as our baseline. 

We broke this down into manageable chunks by setting review dates.  So by 2015 we would like to see a 10% reduction on baseline, by 2020 a further 10% and by 2025 a final 10%.

Job done.  The Bow Arts Environmental Policy was ratified in September 2012.  We hope to get better at understanding our environmental impacts as we travel the path and to use this knowledge to inform our activities.  It’s all one big learning curve... 

Our next posting will describe how we put this into action via an Environmental Action Plan (with some help from our friends at Circus Space).

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One person's junk: Bow Arts gets swapping

The Energy Awareness Campaign at Bow Arts continued last week, when the Green Team decided to promote sustainable habits through recycling and reusing by organising an in house Swap Shop at the Carmelite Café in the Nunnery Gallery. This was the perfect setting for the event as Michael, the café’s proprietor, has gathered second hand crockery to serve drinks in and displays artwork made from recycled and found textiles on the wall.

Staff and artists were invited to bring along their pre-loved goods and take away second hand items that took their fancy. No money was to exchange hands.

There’s a compelling case for avoiding buying new items and throwing unwanted ones away; DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) tell us that in the UK, we are consuming natural resources at an unsustainable rate. Whilst at the same time we’re chucking loads out; for example, per year we discard 1 million tonnes of clothes, 1 million tonnes of electrical items and an astonishing and shocking 7 million tonnes of food!

Rather than getting rid of unwanted goods via the waste system, it makes sense to reuse them where possible. Bow Arts staff and artists did us proud with a wonderful array of items on offer, ranging from a china rhino, a giant yellow protractor, a duffle coat and a coveted Barry White CD. We browsed the selection over complimentary hot chocolate whilst exclamations of ‘I really need a washing line!’ and ‘Mad Men Series 3? That will complete my collection’ were heard demonstrating that one person’s junk can truly be another’s treasure.

For listings of clothes swapping, or ‘swishing’ events, visit http://swishing.com

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The Bow Arts Swap Shop