Arts Council England is the first arts funding body in the world to put environmental sustainability in the funding agreements of its major revenue funding programmes.
Partnership with Julie's Bicycle
In order to manage this, we are working in partnership with Julie's Bicycle. This represents a new way of working for the Arts Council whereby Julie's Bicycle provides support and expertise directly to funded arts and cultural organisations.
Julie's Bicycle is providing:
1 A free-to-use online suite of carbon calculators, called the IG Tools, which enables clients to measure the environmental impacts of energy and water use. These have been developed over a number of years and have been designed to reflect the specific sectors and activity types represented by funded organisations.
2 Telephone and email support for organisations learning how to use the IG Tools;
3 Online resources to assist organisations with the development of environmental policies and action plans;
4 Telephone and email support for questions regarding the development of environmental policies and action plans. However, Julie's Bicycle will not be able to review policies and action plans.
5 Analysis of results for the Arts Council
Environmental Reporting for organisations 2012-15
As part of funding agreements, we have asked funded organisations to start collecting environmental data and have in place an Environmental Action Plan and Policy. Our partnership with Julie's Bicycle provides the means for organisations to achieve this.
Meeting the environmental reporting requirements
1 Collecting environmental data
We are asking organisations to measure greenhouse gas emissions from energy and water use from 2012/13 onwards.
To do that, organisations are required to enter their annual energy and water consumption from their utility invoices into the IG Tools. Data can be entered annually, quarterly or more regularly if required. We are asking for the entry of data for each year to be completed annually, in line with the deadline for completion of the new Annual Report. We currently anticipate this to be the end of each May.
Julie's Bicycle will provide us with breakdowns and analyses of IG Tool usage.
2 Having an environmental policy and action plan in place
Julie's Bicycle has created guidelines to help develop environmental policies and action plans and provided examples currently being used by creative organisations to show what an environmental policy should look like in practice.
Environmental Policy and Action Plan Guidelines
Examples of policies and action plans
We are asking organisations to develop or update their environmental policy and action plan by 31 May 2013. Again, this is in line with the expected deadline for submission of the new Annual Report. We realise that for many organisations, this will be when the first complete year of environmental data will be available and the plan or policy will reflect that.
We will be asking organisations to report about the action plans or policies within the context of the Annual Report.
Further support for funded organisations
Workshop programme
Between May and July 2012 Julie's Bicycle ran a series of workshops across the country to introduce the tools, resources and support they are providing. The workshops provided an overview of the Funding Agreement environmental reporting requirements; a demonstration of the IG Tools; a session on environmental policy development and action planning, and opportunities for attendees for discussion and any experience with taking action on environmental impacts to date.
Example workshop presentation.
FAQs
Following the workshop programme, Julie's Bicycle has pulled together a list of frequently asked questions about the Arts Council's environmental reporting requirements for National portfolio organisations and Major partner museums.
Webinars
Julie's Bicycle will be holding workshops again next summer (2013) but in the meantime will be offering webinars covering similar ground to the workshops and troubleshooting. To register for upcoming webinars please email support@juliesbicycle.com.
Further information
For detailed enquiries please contact Julie's Bicycle directly:
Christina Tsiarta or Luke Ramsay
Tel: 0208 746 0400
Any queries about environmental sustainability and funding can be made to: sustainability@artscouncil.org.uk.
