COVENTRY is one step closer to becoming the ‘greenest’ ever UK City of Culture.
Coventry City of Culture Trust has reaffirmed its commitment to making this year’s event the most sustainable by creating a new Green Code, covering everything from travel and procurement to the delivery of events.
The code will apply not only to internal Trust team members, but organisations and suppliers working with them. The Trust will also be challenged to learn from and improve on each event it delivers from an eco perspective.
Staff, freelancers, contractors, suppliers, co-producers and others are asked to adhere to a series of principles and behaviours in order to deliver ‘an environmentally conscious City of Culture programme’.
These include taking no internal flights on the UK mainland, the use of public transport and other active travel (‘where safe and feasible’), to avoid chemical toilets for events along with single-use plastics and to use only timber-based products that are FSC approved. All catering businesses should be supplied with bio-degradable or compostable packaging and buy local where possible.
Jacob Gough, Coventry City of Culture Trust production director, said: “From day one, it’s been a priority to ensure that Coventry’s year as UK City of Culture has a positive impact on the environment.
“Our Green Code challenges us to be bold, to be open, to think hard and be transparent when it comes to our decision-making, considering the impacts of our decisions on future generations in order to ensure that everything we do is as green and as sustainable as it can possibly be.
“For example, our procurement process will mandate us to think about what we’re buying and where it will end up to ensure we are mitigating against the environmental impact of any products we use.
“The Green Code will help to ensure that City of Culture not only leaves a positive social, economic and cultural legacy for the region but an environmental one too. The behaviours we’re committing to now are only just the beginning and we’ll continue to evolve our ambition as the year continues.”
Another example of the Trust’s commitment to the green agenda is The Green Futures programme, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF), during this’s year of UK City of Culture beginning on May 15.
This includes two already announced events, Small Bells Ring, a floating library aboard a fully-functioning canal boat, and Tides Within Us, a series of immersive audio-visual artworks imagining how the natural world connects to the flow of oxygen within us in Coventry’s newly formed Charterhouse Heritage Park.
Anna Jenkins, Director, England Midlands and East, National Lottery Heritage Fund, said: “We ask the projects we fund do their upmost to think sustainably, support nature’s recovery and consider the future of our cultural and natural heritage.
“This new Green Code and our support for the Coventry City of Culture 2021 Green Futures programme do exactly that, they put the planet first and demonstrate how everyone can play their part in protecting the planet for future generations.”
Read the full Green Code here: coventry2021.co.uk/about/our-green-code/
