MICEBOOK - POWER 50 GREEN CHAMPIONS COVER 1 - Flipbook - Page 18
Page 18
Phoebe Currie
Sustainability and Social Values
Manager, SLX
Since Phoebe started working at SLX in
August 2021, her impact has been
undeniable. Her passion for sustainability
and social value has led to SLX becoming B Corp accredited company and
winning several major contracts. These
include Broadcast Lighting and Rigging
for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games and the Birmingham 2022
Commonwealth Games, with both
evaluations highlighting the innovative
environmental actions that Phoebe has
implemented.
When she joined the business, SLX did
not have a sustainability policy, so she
had to start from scratch, calculating the
company’s carbon footprint and
implementing a strategy to reduce its
negative impact and increase its
positive environmental and social
impact.
Her key challenges included changes to
behaviours and convincing people to
put sustainability as a priority in
everything they do. This is difficult in such
a fast-paced industry and really needs
to be embedded into the fabric of the
company. She has put in place initiatives
to reduce carbon emissions across the
business with clear targets in place for
the future and led the company’s nature
positive approach by managing its
partnership with Wilderkind, an
organisation that seeks to accelerate
rewilding projects in Great Britain.
Phoebe has become a Practitioner
member of IEMA (PIEMA) and a
Registered Environmental Professional
(REnvP) in 2023, and undertaken carbon
management courses with IEMA, LCA
course with UCL and B Lab B leader
training to name a few. SLX was awarded
the first ever TPi Green Award with the
judges stating, “SLX demonstrated best
practice and ambition to make a
difference”.
Phoebe’s commitments also led to SLX
delivering over £300,000 worth of
sustainability and social value at the
Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth
Games through reducing CO2 in the
delivery of the project and providing
training and access to mental health
resources for all staff, offering work
experience placements and prioritising
procurement and resourcing from within
the local Birmingham area.
Pip Kenny
Creative Services Director, CI Group
Passionate about the impact that
humans have had on the planet and the
destruction of the world’s precious,
natural resources, Pip wanted to
champion how making small changes in
behaviours could impact the planet in a
carbon positive way. She created the
‘Carbon Positive Impact’ value as one of
the 5 core values that are the pillars of
CIG behaviour.
This value has been communicated
through company meetings, inductions
and workshops, as well as included in
each employee’s Personal Development
Review Objectives. In support of this,
David Watt, CEO said, it was imperative
that the whole business got behind this
vision, encouraging all staff to think
about how they could reduce carbon
impact in all projects.
As a starting point, Pip instigated a
mandatory inclusion of a Carbon
Offsetting levy on all client cost
estimates, to help mitigate against some
of the negative carbon production their
event may incur. CIG also subscribed to
isla, to use Trace to monitor the impact
of client events.
As a benchmark project, Pip initiated a
CIG hosted event in October last year,
‘Changing Behaviours for Climate Action’
where 80 industry leaders were invited to
network and discuss issues around
sustainability. Each aspect from the
event was considered for its environmental impact; from creating physical invites
on paper that could replanted after the
event with embedded wildflower seeds
to a locally sourced vegan menu. Pip was
also the Creative Director responsible for
the branding for Net Zero Carbon Events
Roadmap to Net Zero, which was
launched at COP27 in 2022.
By partnering with Climate Wise, Pip
initiated an employee offsetting scheme,
where the carbon footprint of all staff
was calculated, and money invested into
the planting of Mangrove in Madagascar.
To date CI Group has already offset
285.37 CO2 tonnes which is equivalent to
33,238.81 trees planted and 1,386,721 miles
offset in a typical family car.
Rebecca Whitman
Sustainability Manager, Walk the
Plank
Building on outdoor art specialists Walk
the Plank’s (WTP) many years of refining its
sustainable approach, Green Space Dark
Skies (GSDS) aimed to open the dialogue
around rights and access to and within
our landscapes and the collective
responsibility we have as custodians of
the environment for future generations.
A series of 20 events across the UK in
April-September 2022 brought thousands
of people from all walks of life into
National Parks and Areas of Outstanding
Natural Beauty to make temporary light
artworks in the landscape with newly
developed geo-positioning lights. These
artworks were captured on film for a series
of 16 free to watch online films, culminating in a one-hour BBC Countryfile special.
Rebecca Whitman was employed as a
dedicated sustainability manager to work
across the whole project, measuring,
monitoring, and reporting on impacts and
providing support and expertise. She
produced a comprehensive Sustainability
Strategy and Data Management Plan to
steer the project, along with a Sustainable
Procurement Guide, Sustainable Production Handbook, and event-specific
sustainability checklists. Two carbon
measurement tools were used, one
specific to the event industry (TRACE) and
another more commonly used in the film
industry (Albert).
The project was commissioned and
funded by UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK
festival. Sustainability West Midlands
acted as Sustainability Consultants for
UNBOXED and were in close contact with
Rebecca throughout the delivery of the
project.
GSDS put social and environmental
sustainability at its heart, achieving
impressive successes across many areas
and saving around 98 tCO2e. The
award-winning project was not only an
exemplary example of low-carbon and
inclusive outdoor event production but will
also have a valuable ongoing legacy in
the form of Rebecca’s post-project
Sustainability Impact Report that is
published as an educational tool for the
events, creative and cultural industries.
