Last week, the collaborative project Visible City finished in Melbourne. It was the keynote project of the Melbourne Fringe Festival 2010.
Beyond the work, new collaborations and discussions around practice, public space and cities there was also a quieter focus on sustainability. After working closely with the Green Intern Carrie Sze, we decided to go for a more integrated take on how this would roll out. I think my own viewpoint moving into the project was to find a way to measure our impact and to aim for targets. It seems like if we were able to point to a few key markers then it would be a way to trumpet our achievements and therefore to hopefully encourage others to follow suit.
As Carrie pointed out – it is more about behavioural change for the artists. We would hope that this then would roll into other aspects of their own lives and work.
These were our goals;
1. Integrate sustainability into all aspects of the process of the project, without having to compromise on artistic choice or practice.
2. To affect change in all the participants in the project.
3. Measure the impact of choices we make across a multi-disciplinary arts project.
4. Create a legacy document that reflects the sustainability element of Visible City, and offers the wider community a way into making sustainable choices.
Personally I was interested in looking at the project across some key areas;
Food, Energy, Transport and Waste.
Across these areas I think we did pretty well;
Food
We made a decision quite early on that we would need to cater for the artists as we were asking them to make work every day for 19 days. We decided to try to use places that followed the following rules; locally sourced produce, organic and low waste. After some research we went with Original Foods. They went the closest to fulfilling these rules.
Energy
We wanted to go with renewables if at all possible. Unfortunately due to our choice of workspace which is an empty shell of a shopfront, we were unable to control the choice of energy company. This was determined by the QV shopping complex.
Transport
We calculated and then offset all the plane and car travel.
Waste
With an integrated process we worked with designer Mel Page to ensure that all of the large items coming into the space would be either a) returnable, b) reusable or c) recyclable. We were incredibly happy to send a lot of the tables and other materials to Footscray Community Arts Centre and to Head Quarters in Westgarth, thus ensuring another life. We also made sure we had separate bins for mixed recycling, paper recycling, organics and landfill. In the end I think this aspect of Visible City was very successful, we only did one small run to the tip to take away about 4 items, the landfill bin was only emptied about 4 times over the period of the project.
How much the artists took away with them the ideas of sustainability is unknown, I guess this is the ongoing struggle with this type of work – how do you measure the change that has happened?
Perhaps it is as Producer Bindi Green said, up to the venues and festivals to create a connected green policy as they are the ones that can control their outcomes whereas it is impossible to hold artists to account if they don’t feel the same way.
