There is a Chinese proverb that says "the miracle is not to fly in the air or to walk on water, but to walk on the earth." This planet is what we all have in common and this is something we like to remind ourselves often at Take Art. All of us care deeply about our environment here and we know the little steps we take to be kinder to our planet do add up.
We were curious about our carbon footprint so we've undertaken a case study that examined our way of touring artists to remote locations versus conventional theatre touring. Our findings were beyond our expectations! Read the full case study here.
Blair Dunlop’s tour
In February 2024, singer-songwriter Blair Dunlop toured four Somerset villages through Take Art: Holford, Chaffcombe, Curry Mallet and Charlton Horethorne. We used this tour as the basis of our case study. We measured Blair's travel from his home to each venue and back. We also took meter readings from each village hall. 250 people came to see him play between Thursday to Sunday, their travel information was also collected. We then used this information to calculate the carbon we produced bringing this amazing artist to people who do not have easy access to the conventional venues that Blair usually plays in.
Audience Travel
Most of our audience (79%) drove to the venue due to poor public transport in rural areas. This audience travel accounted for 95% of all the emissions produced during the tour.
The study revealed that Blair’s tour produced 20% less carbon than if the same number of people saw him in a theatre in a central location. This comparison was achieved using Julie’s Bicycle Carbon Calculator. Interestingly, Blair pulled in some people from far away, which is unusual for our shows; we typically have hyper-localised audiences. If we removed these anomalies to make our audience more typical of a rural touring crowd, the emissions from audience travel were reduced by 55%!
Our Venues
Rural Touring has sustainability in its DNA; we stage high quality shows in community venues – village halls, pubs and cafes. Using these spaces for performances as well as for their day-to-day activities means we are making the most of these village assets. The four village halls Blair toured to had invested in their energy systems, one even had solar panels fitted. This all really helped to keep the halls heated during the chilly February run. When compared to one show in a typical small-scale theatre, our 4 date tour produced 90% less carbon per audience member!
Learning Points
It’s important to keep some context. Touring performance companies around Somerset is largely climate-guilt free; we’re not the coal-burning baddies here. That being said, we do like to make sure that we’re impacting the environment as little as we can. It’s always something we think about, especially when organising artists’ tours. We want to make them as economical and sustainable as possible. At the end of every year, Take Art offsets the impact we do make so we are a carbon neutral company.
Further Steps
As audience travel made up most of the carbon emissions from Blair’s tour, we will be looking to assist promoters to encourage car shares, and audiences to use greener methods of travel. We plan to support the venues we work with to access funds to install cleaner energy systems. We also want to empower artists to ensure their shows impact the environment as little as possible, like reusing props and sets from other shows, or sharing with other companies. We will work nationally with our sector partners to ensure that environmental sustainability is at the core of everything we do.
We would like to thank Julie’s Bicycle for compiling the report and for the National Rural Touring Forum for part-funding the case study.
