Sustainability is at the core of everything we do

We try to take responsibility for our choices - for the work on our stages, for our practices and processes, for our effect on the world, we take care to always make what we do as green as it can be.

We are working hard to try out new ideas and approaches that reduce our impact on the planet. We are on a journey and are seeing some great results - but there is always more to do.

In the last few years we have: reduced our water consumption by 35% since our baseline year (2018-19 compared to 2012-13), reduced our energy use related emissions significantly, switched to a fully renewable electricity supply in April 2019, and, for the last three years, have consistently recycled between 50% and 60% of our waste.

★★★★★
Creative Green Assessment
February 2021

Winner
Outstanding Achievement Award
Creative Green Awards in recognition of our commitment to sustainability
November 2020

Both were awarded by  Julie's Bicycle,  a charity that supports the creative community to act on climate change & sustainability.

Carbon Literacy Training

We have developed our own Unicorn Theatre and industry specific Carbon Literacy Training, developed by our Technical and Production Director Jennifer Taillefer.

All of our core staff are fully Carbon Literacy trained, which according to research leads to a 5-15% reduction in personal footprint as result, and helps us make a larger cultural shift in the organisation, and in our industry.

We are now also working with other organisations in the arts to help run this training session within their teams as well.

Greening our Productions

We have created a guidance document for creative teams that outlines the ways in which show sets and props can be built and sourced with a sustainable ethos at its heart. We know that the enthusiasm to work to a higher sustainable standard is there, and we know that these strong guidelines will give people a framework to achieve it.

Our approach in a nutshell: we store set, props and costume whenever we can, so we can reuse and repurpose as we go. We hire, lend and give away to other theatres to reduce the need to buy new. We build flexible, versatile sets that can be used again in different ways.

We have created a hierarchy for building and sourcing set and props. First of all we look at what we have in stock, and if we don’t have the items we need, we look to borrow or hire them, and if that doesn’t work then we look to buy locally, and if we can’t find any other solution then we buy online.

We have also said no to some items – we only use biodegradable glitter, snow and confetti and will not use single-use plastics unless one item lasts the run, and we never use helium or balloons on stage or in the rehearsal room.

The Theatre Green Book

We are incredibly proud to have been involved with the  Theatre Green Book  from the outset, and are committed to adopting these new principles. These standards build upon the work we began with our Greening Productions guide for creative teams, published in January 2020. We will continue meeting our own Green standards across all of our productions, so that all of our shows are made more sustainably, and we look forward to trialing the Green Book standards across three major productions in our October 2021 – June 2022 season.

For more information download the full guidance documents: