Joe GallopOutdoor arts specialists Walk the Plank has released its sustainability report for Green Space Dark Skies (GSDS) – the cross-sector collaborative project commissioned by UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK.
GSDS took place last year as one of ten major projects commissioned by UNBOXED. It took thousands of people into National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty to create large-scale temporary artworks with new Geolight technology, which was captured on film.
GSDS’ data collection included energy, transport, materials, food and beverage, waste, accessibility, diversity, and digital. The project aimed to be climate-positive and remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it produced.
Walk the Plank said the greatest carbon savings were from its Lumenators (participants who carried lights) or staff and crew using coaches instead of individual car journeys (47.23 tCO2e), vegetarian meals instead of meat (approx 25-30 tCO2e), and choosing hotels with green energy tariffs (16.3 tCO2e).
Walk the Plank head of production Nathan Jackson said, “Our aim was for Green Space Dark Skies to be an example of best practice in sustainable event production, thinking about all aspects of our operational delivery. From the outset, we wanted to be transparent about successes and challenges for the collective benefit of everyone working in event production.”
The report’s findings include:
- 50/50 split of vegetarian and meat meals overall
- 71% of suppliers came from within 50 miles
- 13/19 events used over 80% renewable energy
- 81% of Lumenators shared transport
- 26% of accommodation had a green energy tariff
- Diverted >99% of waste from landfill
- Mitigated ten times the carbon footprint through the planting of 15,154 trees with the Woodland Trust
The summary of the report can be found here.