All the world’s a stage but efficiency, efficiency, wherefore art thou . . .

This is an interesting article from The Stage website in the UK showing that the size of a theatre has no bearing on its efficiency.  The organisation referred to in the article, Julie’s Bicycle, makes environmental sustainability intrinsic to the business, art and ethics of music, theatre and the creative industries.

Research finds energy efficiency not dependent on theatre size

by Natalie Woolman, The Stage

New research has revealed that the size of a theatre does not dictate how efficiently it uses energy.

The study was carried out by the green arts organisation Julie’s Bicycle, which used data from more than 100 performing arts venues to create a series of benchmarks about energy usage. During the course of this research, JB discovered that no size of venue or type of art form was necessarily more or less energy efficient than another.

Helen Heathfield, director of energy and environment at JB, said: “I was very surprised by that. I was expecting to see a real difference between, say, dance and music and also expecting to see that smaller venues are either more or less efficient. Certainly, the smaller venues are more variable and the larger ones are a bit closer to the average in general, but we didn’t find any significant relationships.”

She said that JB does not have enough information yet to see whether there is a relationship between the age of the building and its energy efficiency. The age of internal systems, such as heating and air conditioning, might be a more significant factor in a venue’s environmental performance than the age of the building itself.

Julie’s Bicycle has announced several benchmarks for energy use in performing arts venues. The organisation says these will allow theatres to compare their performance with the national average and act as a spur for improvement.

Heathfield explained: “In every walk of life, people love to be able to compare themselves to the average – we like to know if we are above average height or above average weight. The point is to get an understanding of what the average energy use in a venue is so that people can get an understanding of whether they are doing better than average or worse.

“What we have already noticed is, working within groups of similar venues such as the London Theatre Consortium – 12 producing theatres in London – they have found it really helpful to compare their energy use per seat with each another.”

Julie’s Bicycle plans to update these benchmarks, and will gather data from the Arts Council England national portfolio organisations over the course of this year to feed into them.