Sustainability

CPH STAGE is committed to creating and co-creating a more sustainable festival scenario. There is no doubt that the most environmentally sustainable festival would be the one not happening. However that would leave communities and people in a state of cultural and social unsustainability. So sustainability is very much about choices and making the priorities that are for the greater good in the bigger picture. This change into embracing sustainability is complex and we collaborate with different organizations. Step by step we grow more and more sustainable in our way of:

• planning a festival
• collaborating with venues
• encouraging audiences to more sustainable transport
• programming international works in a sustainable conscious way.

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We unfold our sustainable commitment in several ways:

• Since 2020 the festival has been collaborating with external consultants bringing in analysises of the festival in order to identify where we can make changes thatmatter environmentally sustainable.
• 2022– 2023: CPH STAGE and LIFT – London International Theatre Festival was selected for the programme International Touring and Environmental Responsibility by TheDanish Arts Foundation, Arts Council England and the Embassy of Denmark in the UK. First in a programme facilitated by Juliet’s Bicycle and then in a researchexploration of how to communicate and making the sustainable valuable decisions. You can read more about it in this article at LIFT’s website.
• Sustainable Festival Programming of international works is also one of our key causes. We’re practicing it more and more. The international works that we bring from afar should of course bring a cultural diversity and broaden our cultural horizon. In short it is about opening the world and bringing understanding of other cultures to people in Denmark – through the arts. However we’re keen on collaborating and making sure that when we use ressources from the earth to bring in international work this is done in ways that makes the travels worthwhile for as many people in different regions as possible. And with as much impact on local communities as possible – in workshops and co-creational processes. We’re in an ongoing conversation with other festivals about finding the fruitful approaches to this.

Some of the selected Danish artists for the International Days 2023 participated in apodcast where they discussed sustainability – especially in a community context.

In this episode of the podcast series CONNECTED our guests are sharing stories and their personal approaches to the topic of SUSTAINABILITY. Raising questions if it would be better to start replacing SUSTAINABLE with REGENERATIVE? You will meet : Gareth Hart ( Burrinja Cultural Center, Australia), Jonas Nilsson (Nuuk Nordic Culture Festival, Greenland), Tina Tarpgaard (recoil performance group, Denmark), Rasmus Malling Lykke Skov (Teater Fluks, Denmark) and Susanne Andreasen (The National Theatre of Greenland) and truly yours, host Karen Toftegaard (Head of International Programming and Production at CPH STAGE).

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