Sustainability
Our sustainability efforts
As an interdisciplinary, international festival of the arts, we transform the monuments that are halls of the coal and steel industry into places of cultural exchange. The Ruhrtriennale's cultural rededication of the industrial halls enshrines the idea of sustainability in their origins and in the region. At the same time, by redesigning these places, we're also creating an artistic and socially relevant service in partly rural and remote areas of the Ruhr region. In the process, the three-year structure and the architecture of the industrial monuments bring challenges that need to be re-examined and reconsidered with contemporary awareness.
We, the Ruhrtriennale team, are aware that artistically developing and designing these places isn't possible without releasing emissions. The Ruhrtriennale is not (yet) a climate-neutral festival. However, it's our goal to strengthen the sustainability efforts that have already begun and to initiate as much as possible to make the process permanent in the long term.
It's also important for us to mention that we want to save emissions wherever we can, and while some processes can be accelerated, others need time. What we can't and won't give up is keeping the lines open with artists from all over the world, because as an international festival we believe in the power and necessity of cultural exchange.
In order to keep the climate impact of our festival as low as possible, we've defined the following fields of action:
WHAT DO WE HAVE PLANNED FOR THE FUTURE?
Sustainability begins on a small scale. Sustainability is a process. We strive to strategically integrate this process, to constantly re-examine measures that have already been described, to question them and to test them to see how successful they are.
- In the important action areas of energy and mobility, there are areas that we can influence directly, but there are also those over which we have little direct influence. In spite of this, we strive to influence these areas positively in the long term through dialogue with our partners.
- In the long term, we are striving to increasingly integrate sustainability criteria into our awarding and tendering processes as much as we can.
- The digital office and the reduction of paper consumption is an important goal that we want to keep pursuing.
- We want to measure the success of measures that we've already implemented and planned through regular and data-based surveys.
- We want to advocate to make it easier for our audiences to get to our venues and for the expansion of the public transport network.
- It's important to us to sensitise artists and staff to the impact on the climate and we want to offer more support in this area.
Jetzt! Ein Wochenende fürs Klima 2022
Titled Jetzt! A Weekend for the Climate, nine Bochum cultural and educational institutions implemented a three-day program from 18 to 20 November 2022, with music, dance, performance, workshops, discussions and live reporting from the UN Climate Conference in Sharm El Sheikh. The climate weekend kicked off with a powerful protest action in cooperation with Fridays for Future on Hans-Schalla-Platz.
With From Balance Sheet to Strategy – Sustainable Transformations in the Art and Culture Sector, Rebecca Heinzelmann and Regina Weidmann (Sustainability Working Group of the Ruhrtriennale) spoke in an online lecture about the sustainability efforts of the Ruhrtriennale, about goals, experiences, findings and about how the process can be consolidated in the long term, and then answered questions from the audience. In the subsequent 8th Climate Forum of the Schauspielhaus Bochum, Sarah Abbasi, dramaturge of the Ruhrtriennale, and other experts discussed what sustainable and just coexistence can look like.
The Ruhrtriennale was joined by the Schauspielhaus Bochum, the Bochumer Symphoniker, the Kunstmuseum Bochum, the Planetarium, the VHS, the ROTTSTR 5 THEATER, the Prinz Regent Theater and the Deutsche Bergbau-Museum Bochum.