Environmental Policy

Our Business

South East Dance is committed to generating exceptional experiences in dance for all. Artists are the driving force behind South East Dance. They inform, shape and lead our work. We want to engage excellent artists to inspire audiences, participants and other artists. 

 

We believe excellence and access go hand in hand. We don’t see excellence as a product, but as an aspiration. We believe that excellence is subjective and is defined by the experience of the provider, participant and audience on their own terms. In generating exceptional experiences in dance, we will undertake to ensure as far as is possible that environmental sustainability is considered in our work with audience members, participants, practitioners and any other endeavour.

Our Impacts

We are committed to reducing the negative environmental impacts of our own activities, in particular those relating to: 

• Our offices: energy use, water use and waste;
• Our business travel and staff commuting: energy use;
• Our communications materials: use of resources (mainly paper and inks) and transport for
• printed materials and use of energy for storage, downloading, streaming and/or online reading for digital communications;
• Our events: energy use, water use, food, waste, transport and travel;
• The goods and services we choose for our offices: notably stationery, ICT and electronic equipment, furniture and cleaning and;
• The business services we use: notably website, data and email server hosting and banking.

 

Our Commitments

We are committed to understanding, measuring, improving and communicating our environmental performance and engaging management and staff in this process.

 

Our key areas of focus for reducing our impacts are:

• Working with the management of the Lighthouse building, where our office is based, to identify and implement actions to reduce energy and water use, reduce waste and increase recycling;
• Reducing the impacts of business travel and staff commuting: avoiding travel where possible by using webinars and teleconferences, and encouraging the use of zero or low--‐carbon travel modes, e.g. walking, cycling, journey sharing, travelling by public transport and train where possible for longer journeys and European travel and avoiding flying for journeys in England, Scotland and Wales;
• Integrating environmental and ethical considerations when choosing supplies and services
• For our business operations, especially stationery, equipment, furniture, cleaning, banking,
• website and email hosting;
• Working with suppliers and contractors to reduce the impacts of our publications and events and;
• Reducing our digital and ICT impacts.

 

South East Dance is committed to ensuring staff wellbeing, notably by providing a safe, open and co-operative working environment, professional development and training opportunities, good terms and conditions of employment and a unique cultural entitlement offering.

 

In the event that South East Dance opts for carbon offsetting its unavoidable emissions, in particular from business travel, we are committed to using best practice carbon offsetting schemes or other best practice alternatives such as carbon retirement.

 

We are committed to working with our Board, senior management, staff, suppliers, funders and our external stakeholders to ensure we understand and communicate the environmental impacts of our activities. We will produce an annual report on our environmental performance and progress, and make this available both internally and externally.

 

This policy is reviewed on a biennial basis by our board, and updated as and when necessary.

 

The policy is supported by an Environmental Action Plan. The action plan is informed by our environmental monitoring and measurement, and feedback from engaging with our internal and external stakeholders. It is reviewed and updated on an annual basis, and approved by management.

 

This Environmental Policy is endorsed by Rachel Gibson, Executive Director