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Sustainability

Climate change and the environment

Imagine 2020 Summer Lab 2018, produced by Artsadmin. Mama D workshop. Photo by Rob Harris.

We believe that artists and arts organisations have an important role to play in exploring, communicating and taking practical action against issues around climate change and the environment.

Artsadmin is continually working to reduce the environmental impact of the work we do across our artistic programme, how we run our organisation and building, and how we are funded.

Sustainability and Our Artistic Programme

Artsadmin and Julie’s Bicycle are co-delivering Season for Change, a UK-wide programme of cultural responses celebrating the environment and inspiring urgent action on climate change.

As founder members of a European network called Imagine 2020, we have produced projects including 2 Degrees Festival (in 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019) and commissioned Plunge and Empathy Museum, in collaboration with LIFT.

In 2019, we secured EU funding from Creative Europe to continue this collaborative work on art and climate change through a 4-year project called ACT (Art Climate Transition).

We work with artists and activists, supporting grassroots activity as well as commissioning and producing particular projects. We also take steps to make the way we work more sustainable, both at our Toynbee Studios home and in the projects that we produce all over the world – for example, we have created a green rider for touring.

Communications

Our communications team has been exploring greener ways of working – they even wrote a blog about it. In terms of physical marketing materials, we only produce what we need, and seek out greener alternatives where possible. Our printed materials are printed with waterless presses, vegetable-based inks and machinery powered by 100% renewable energy. In 2018, we switched from using single use plastic cups in in our café to reusable plastic cups.

Our website hosting is powered entirely by renewable energy with Kualo, one of the very first hosts to make this important step. Their data centre has various efficiency measures in place, such as economic free air cooling when the UK weather is cold enough, hot aisle containment so the hot air expelled from the servers never mixes with the chilled air, and automated sensor-controlled lighting.

Read more about greener marketing approaches

Toynbee Studios

Artsadmin runs Toynbee Studios as sustainably as we can and are working towards carbon neutrality. We are currently embarking on a capital project to further reduce our carbon footprint, thanks to Arts Council England Small Capital funding.

We have a Green staff subcommittee that meet quarterly and monitors our Environmental Policy and Action Plan, which you can read or download on our Policies pages. All our measures are in the Plan but some of things we do in our building include:

  • All of our electricity comes from 100% renewable sources and our roof is covered in our solar panels.
  • All lighting is LED.
  • We save water through devices in all toilet cisterns and water meters.
  • We recycle as much as possible, from regular items like paper, metal and glass to coffee, light bulbs and electrical goods, and reuse or repurpose items like sets and furniture. 
  • We replaced hand towels with energy efficient hand dryers to reduce waste.
  • Our café is vegetarian and only offers biodegradable single-use cups and cutlery, encouraging non-disposable crockery.
  • We encourage greener travel, including commuting to work via bicycle, walking and public transports, and to use planes rather than trains for longer distance travel where possible.
  • Our website is hosted on a renewably-powered platform and, when print is needed, we produce it on recycled paper with renewably-powered waterless presses and eco inks.

Between 2018-2020, Artsadmin participated in the first Accelerator programme, run by Julie’s Bicycle. Through a collaboration with Bow Arts, this shaped our thinking in relation to theoretical models of sustainability, particularly around the circular economy and facilitating sustainable studios practice for users of Toynbee Studios.

In 2014, we installed solar panels and were awarded a Green Tourism for London Gold Award and in 2012, we were runners up in the Art & Culture category of the Observer Ethical Awards.

Ethical Funding

In 2015 we joined Platform’s initiative Fossil Funds Free, which means we do not take any oil, coal, or gas corporate sponsorship for our cultural work. We have been an active voice in the arts about ethical funding and we created an Ethical Fundraising Policy in 2015, which has been reviewed and evolved over the years. You can download and read our policy, which encourages relationships with organisations that actively operate for the positive benefit of people, animals and the environment in a fair and transparent way.

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