094 Transition Towns and Theatre

TRANSITION THEATRE
The Transition Town movement is global, although it started off in Totnes Devon. There are almost 300 official initiatives and loads more in the making. It would be great to create a web-based portal for sharing resources, best practice and ideas for linking transition towns to theatre.
Ideas
Sharing info about existing initiatives, e.g. scenerysalvage.com, using LED lights in shows; promote new shows that have a transition theme; share info held by theatre outreach groups/officers; making physical theatres available for transition groups; facilitating web-based communications between geographically diverse transition towns.

ART ACTIVISTS
Climate Camp; Tipping Point; John Jordan - Lab of I.I.; Platform arts; Show of Strength (Bristol) 'Trading Local' ~ roving show that promotes local shops and celebrates local history, experiences, creativity along local high streets, using a range of venues. Makes a kind of arts festival inspired for and aimed at the local community.

COMMUNITY
Transition Towns want to communicate the issues of peak oil and climate change to the public and also promote their local groups /events /sustainability agenda.
Ideas
Have free workshops / 'pay what you think it's worth' events; experiment with different public venues (pubs, supermarkets, stations, streets); engage with people by having good quality 1:1 conversations (as in Lewisham's usherette example)

FUTURE VISIONS
Transition Towns seek to create an enticing vision of the future which comes from the collective genius of the community. How can theatre draw out people's creativity as well as presenting inspiring visions.
Ideas
Use walks around physical space, use historical pictures to show how area has already changed; use theatre games to think through / demonstrate behaviour change / model the vision; divide up goals into those that are easy to achieve right now, those that are desirable but take some effort and those that are harder to achieve and more long term; use performance artists / theatre to ask the right questions and collect ideas.

CREATIVITY
Use recycling theme to generate visual art pieces, e.g. puppets out of scrap cloth. Use excess TT produce to generate art.

020 where do all good theatre sets go to die

Convener: Gary Campbell

Participants: Jenniffer Lunn, Naomi Kelly, David, Rajha Shakiri, Kate Lane, Samal Blak, Myro Wolff, Amy, Antonia, Andy

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

The question was posed more as a catalyst for discussing sustainability in through design than a quest for the answer, however an answer was found within the first 5 minutes

Jennifer told us about salvage scenery in Amersham who will collect your set for a fee [ based on it’s weight and location ] and the recycle, reuse and re sell the items props and furniture usually at a low cost.

It was agreed that this is a valuable resource for any designer and that we’d all wished we knew about it before our last show.

But that in order to address the issue of sustainability – both economic and environmental something else was needed.

The suggestion of a shared storage space was made, however with this comes the administration of a building which is a strain on resources in it’s self.

The creation of a network of designers and producers that shares information about the stock they have and is willing to let others use it was suggested as a direction to explore.

Various formats for this have been discussed ranging from a theatre specific freecycle to setting up a dedicated ning, or just using existing networks like facebook.

There is a possibility of using google docs/maps to share inventories and locate a network of stores.

Also a messageboard was suggested run my vanilla

Email addresses were exchanged and I will be posting a message in the newroom for anyone else interested to sign up.

I will contact all of those who signed up and keep everyone up to date – my email is francisbarking at gmail.com