NRW Scholarship for Young Talents of Independent Children’s and Youth Theatre 2021 by Stefanie Schwimmbeck
The aim of this year’s WESTWIND festival is to develop measures within all areas that preserve resources & energy and reduce CO2 & waste. The festival’s climate footprint will be assessed using the tool EVENT.rechner by EnergyAgency.NRW. This shall serve as a benchmark and incentive for future theatre festivals to reduce CO2 emissions.
https://www.energieagentur.nrw/klimaschutz/eventrechner
Waste separation
There are plenty of rubbish bins throughout the building with information on how to separate rubbish correctly and how to upcycle it before disposing of it. If you can't find the bin you need, you'll learn where to find the nearest suitable bin. All festival visitors who smoke will receive a hand-held ashtray from the Cologne cigarette butt collection system TobaCycle to dispose of their hazardous waste cigarette butts in appropriate collection containers.
Vegan catering
In order to make an important contribution to the climate and to provide festival visitors with healthy and sustainable food, this year’s festival catering is not only of organic quality, but also exclusively vegan. The WAGENHALLE restaurant, located in COMEDIA Theatre, has been using the RECUP deposit system for its to-go cup service since summer 2021, thus saving a huge amount of packaging waste. In addition, visitors can utilise a map and the RECUP app to find cafés in the district and surrounding area where coffee cups can be easily refilled and returned.
Upcycled bags
Instead of buying festival bags and backpacks as usual, this year’s festival bags were individually upcycled from old T-shirts in just a few steps without a sewing machine. Cologne-based MODE KOLLEKTIV helped us print the festival logo onto the bags by hand using ecological, water-based screen-printing ink.
In addition, each festival bag contains items that were not bought new but were either on hand or upcycled: a COMEDIA notebook made from old scrap paper from the theatre offices and cardboard packaging, old promotional pens and key rings, name tags from past events, a small programme leaflet and an ashtray.
Clean up
Together with our sustainability scholarship holder, the festival is offering clean-up opportunities in nearby Volksgarten park to raise awareness for one of the most significant environmental problems of our time. These “clean-ups” are offered on a voluntary basis and sufficient gloves and rubbish bags will be provided. Bottle caps and cigarette butts will be collected separately for the Cologne collection systems BlechWech e.V. and TobaCycle. The money raised from the crown caps will be donated to African SOS Children’s Villages for vaccinations and the cigarette butts will be upcycled into new granulate, which in turn will be used to make ashtrays.
When: Fri, 20.8.2021, 11:30 to 13:00 and Mon, 23.8.2021, 16:00 to 17:30
No registration required.
Clean-ups with school classes
Under the motto WHO SPEAKS FOR THE ANIMALS? groups of 3rd-5th graders will be offered 90-minute clean-up sessions together with our scholarship holder. These sessions can be booked by schools before and during the festival. Children will learn about littering and its consequences for nature, animals and people as well as about how to take responsibility on their own initiative. Afterwards, we will conduct an artistic exploration of the objects found outside, which will be exhibited on the foyer wall.
Decorations / Pinboards / Signage
Our decorative pennant garland as well as the notepads for the “Change your focus” wall, a project of Theater*Labor, are all upcycled. This means cost savings instead of expensive new purchases and a new usage for old posters. The only purchase we made was new adhesive tape with natural rubber glue to stick the notes on. We have also reused previously laminated door signs by pasting over the old theatre logos with our current festival sticker.