Our Commitment to Sustainability

Wise Children have an active commitment to best practice in environmental sustainability, ensuring that environmental concerns are part of all decision-making, and that all staff members understand and contribute to achieving our goals.

We are committed to reducing our carbon impact and have set the following targets for 2024:

All core staff trained in Carbon Literacy.
Senior Management to complete Pathway to Net-Zero training with a view to our new home, The Lucky Chance, operating at net zero.
Continuing detailed carbon footprinting and reporting to better understand our impact and ways to reduce it.
Working towards the standards of the Theatre Green Book
Sharing our journey and working with peers to be part of revolutionising the industry.

Productions

In 2022 we started working towards the baseline standard of the Theatre Green Book. The Theatre Green Book offers guidance on best practice, with the aim of sustainability becoming integral to production processes.

We aim to:

Embed the Theatre Green Book approach.

Support a Green Team within the organisation to help promote the TGB approach, contribute to achieving the organisations environmental goals and make sure the aims are understood by all employees.

Set concepts, budgets and schedules to support sustainable practice.
Eliminate the use of unsustainable and harmful materials and chemicals.
Ensure all new materials are sustainably sourced.
100% of plastics being reusable, recyclable or compostable.
50% or more of materials used in a production (set, props, costumes etc) having had a previous life.
65% of production materials are re-used or recycled post-production.
To reduce the impact of our activity across all technical departments.
Minimise deliveries and opt for sustainable transport options.

Sustainability in Action

The Little Matchgirl (2023)

Each new production brings with it new energy and the promise of something that has yet to be experienced or seen. But in a time when reusing and reinventing is at the forefront of everyone's minds, we at Wise Children are acutely aware of the impact and implications that come with a new production.

With this in mind, on The Little Matchgirl, we sought to reuse, alter and mend as many of the existing costumes as possible. We fitted, altered, repaired and breathed new life into corsets, jackets, trousers and skirts. What we did have to buy came second hand: we spent joyful hours trawling charity shops in the town and surrounding areas, finding coats, shoes, jackets and few Christmas jumpers. Materials, fittings and trim were

sourced locally, to support independent shops in Frome, and cut down on deliveries and CO2.

Theatre has a long history of being resourceful; recycling props, set and costumes. At Wise Children celebrate this and work continuously to push ourselves to be more conscious of how we can lessen our impact environmentally, but never artistically.

- Liz Evans, Costume Supervisor

The Lucky Chance

Our journey to net-zero

In 2022 we purchased an old Methodist church in Frome, which we have renamed The Lucky Chance. The Lucky Chance is our home: a space to play, to host, to teach and to perform in. It is also a home that we are committed to developing sustainably, and with the intention of it operating as a net zero building in the future.

We are on the pathway to net-zero, a journey which we plan to document and share.

So far we are:

- 100% electric.

- Powered by Ecotricity, providing 100% green energy.