Environmental Sustainability: DanceSyndrome’s Commitment
Environmental sustainability has never been more important and as a charity with a strong focus on equity, inclusion and social justice, we feel that we need to consider the environmental impact of our work.
Environmental sustainability is a serious issue that impacts on local communities and because climate change directly impacts on the poorest people in the world then it is a social justice issue as well as an environmental one, so it is important for us to make the right environmental choices in the delivery of our work.
Environmental sustainability is a journey that all ethical businesses should be embarking on and we want to outline what we think that journey might look like for our organisation. As we start that journey, we want to outline some of the commitments that we will be making over the coming months and years.
Our first steps have been to make a declaration in partnership with Culture Declares Emergency and to develop a list of pledges which we will work towards achieving.
Culture Declares Emergency:
Culture Declares is a growing international movement of individuals and organisations in the cultural sector declaring climate and ecological emergency. This means telling the truth, taking action and seeking justice on climate focussed issues. The aim is to grow, support and mobilise a movement of declarers in the UK cultural sector and inspire and work with others internationally.
Members of the movement believe that climate science needs to be acted on urgently and there needs to be far-reaching systemic change if we are to turn from the path we are on, with Earth’s life-supporting systems at risk.
DanceSyndrome is joining the declaration to shout about our environmental actions, impact & responsibilities, and to influence our stakeholders to do the same. You can read our declaration on the Culture Declares website.
Our Environmental Sustainability Pledges:
As part of our environmental sustainability planning we have come up with some pledges that we hope to work towards to ensure that sustainability is something that we genuinely work towards achieving, rather than being a token gesture. The specific applications of these pledges can be found in our Sustainability Policy.
1. We will onboard our team, trustees, service users & partners with our ‘live’ Sustainability Policy which will be implemented & embedded across everything we do.
2. We will identify relevant training & support to up-skill our team, trustees & service users to understand our environmental impact across all areas of our work.
3. We will work with expert partners who specialise in sustainable fashion & sourcing ethical, recycled and upcycled products to understand the environmental impact of our merchandise, costumes & props.
4. We will work to make our print marketing activities more sustainable by working with carbon neutral suppliers with strong sustainability policies of their own.
5. We will work in partnership with the community centres in which we operate to agree joint ‘environmental & sustainable’ principles of working to achieve our ambitions.
6. We will schedule regular reviews of our practices & continuously improve on our environmental impact using measurable targets and objectives.
7. We will continuously ‘live’ our Sustainability Policy & embed it’s principles throughout everything we do.
8. We will publicly declare our pledges & ambitions through the ‘Culture Declares Emergency’ global movement .
9. We will develop & devise a data collection tool to monitor our carbon footprint across all our activities.
10. We will research climate justice and sustainability certification & utilise available tools where there are gaps within our organisation.
As we said earlier, this is just the starting point for us and we know that this will be a constantly changing commitment, so we welcome constructive feedback from our stakeholders on how we can improve and evolve this plan. Contact us at info@dancesyndrome.co.uk to share your thoughts!
