June 19, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
Arts groups large and small should start assessing and improving their impact on the environment, writes Andrew Taylor in The Artful Manager. Mr. Taylor is director of the Bolz Center for Arts Management at the University Wisconsin-Madison School of Business.
Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, in Vienna, Va., has already begun such a process, he writes, by creating a national advisory group to assess the organization’s “environmental footprint.”
The group, which has a large outdoor amphitheater as well as a smaller indoor space for performances, plans to take steps to turn the organization into “an environmental model and resource for artists and arts presenters around the country.”
Mr. Taylor also writes that the Live Earth concerts scheduled for July 7 in nine cities worldwide will follow a new set of “green event guidelines” designed to reduce the environmental impact of a large event. The concert is a program of several groups including the Alliance for Climate Protection. Former Vice President Al Gore is the group’s chairman.
“Wolf Trap and Live Earth may be large and national organizations,” writes Mr. Taylor, “but their initiatives should encourage the question at even the smallest arts group: How green are you?”
Has your organization taken steps to protect the environment? Share your ideas about what has worked and what has not by clicking on the comment box just below this posting.
