Sustainability forum in London
While the COP30 was taking place in Belém, Brazil, Opera Europa too was involved in two intensive days of work and discussions on the topic of Sustainability on 13 and 14 November.
On 13 November, the Sustainability forum met for the first time as a specialist forum at Royal Ballet & Opera Covent Garden for a dense day of reflections on ways to keep motivation high around sustainability, exchange of good practice and conversations on various topics during table discussions in small groups. It was a very fruitful day, that built ties amongst a new category of profiles that appeared in the lyric landscape over the last few years. The action-oriented sessions will also help determine the upcoming steps of common work for the group.
On 14 November, the Theatre Green Book and the National Theatre in London organised the gathering Sustainable Theatre: a global Challenge. Over 400 colleagues from the performing arts sector of the UK, Europe and the World participated in this meeting. Georg Häusler, Director for Culture, Creativity & Sports at the European Commission, was present for the whole day and gave an inspiring address on the role of culture, particularly for Sustainability in our society. Our colleague Celia Grau, Sustainability & Special Projects Manager, shared the "How can sharing accelerate change?" with Sanne Brodersen from Royal Danish Opera, Bob Brandsen from Dutch National Opera & Ballet, Paul Handley of the National Theatre and Sara Turnbull, from ReStage.
On this occasion, the Theatre Green Book announced it will become an independent non-for-profit organisation, chaired by Abigail Pogson, Chief Executive Director of the Glasshouse International Centre of Music and taking over that same position at Barbican Centre soon. Congratulations to Paddy Dillon and Lisa Burger, co-founders of this project, which has very successfully grown in the last years!
These two days confirmed that the Theatre Green Book is and remains a very helpful sustainability common standard for the performing arts. Its implementation is continuing to spread around Europe, with very active national network,s and in the World (creation of networks in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Latin America, Australia). We are thus particularly happy that our collaboration with the Theatre Green Book and Fedora, involving 15 opera companies was launched this autumn. The project aiming at collaboratively taking on the TGB guidelines within the companies shall help adapting the existing Books specifically to the opera sector and to spread it within our field.
INSPIRE
2026 will be the year of results of our Erasmus+ project co-funded by the European Union. The online Learning Platform with training modules on sustainability, digitalisation, management and resilience will be available early Spring 2026, with recognised certification for the course.
Register to the INSPIRE newsletter on inspire-performing-arts.eu and follow INSPIRE Performing Arts EU on Facebook and LinkedIn to keep updated!
What’s happening within the membership?
Opera Europa members are moving along with the sustainability topic and we will use this section to report on best practices, news and reflections.
Suppliers: Royal Ballet & Opera and the performing arts sector in the UK have elaborated a well thought-out survey for suppliers to get information about their sustainability standards. You can access the survey here.
Mobility: Opéra de Lille, together with other cultural institutions of the French region Nord succeeded in convincing the public transport company of the city of Lille to initiate a deep research on the mobility behaviour of the Nord population. You can find the results of the research here (in French only)
Carbon Footprint calculator: Réunion des Opéras de France has released an Open Source carbon footprint calculator. You can find link to the calculator here.
Boosting environmental awareness in opera creation: the EU-funded Butterfly project is coming to an end and the results of this rich collaboration between Teatro Comunale di Modena, Opera Bałtycka Gdansk and Opera Box in Helsinki around sustainable co-creation are now available on the website projectbutterfly.eu.
