A green rectangle with an illustration of a bird on, and words that read 'Culture Declares Emergency. #Culture Takes Action.' There is a circle next to it with text in that read 'Climate & Ecological emergency."

Highly Sprung Performance Company declares a Climate and Ecological Emergency

 

 Below is Highly Sprung’s pledge as part of Culture Declares Emergency, working towards climate action and justice. Learn more about the movement here.  This statement will be regularly updated as we develop as an organisation. Resources will also be added to facilitate conversation and change. 

This statement was last updated on Thursday 3rd March 2022 and will be reviewed on Monday 2nd May 2022.  

Highly Sprung pledges to work with and support our community and local government in tackling the Climate & Ecological Emergency, and we call on others to do the same.

 

The Climate and Ecological Emergency endangers our ability to deliver our mission, making work for and with children and young people, in the community and schools and making and touring performance work for the public. Our work explores and constructs stories inspired by humanity, and the complex world. The Climate Emergency is the most pervasive threat to our work, we seek to inspire better futures for young people, a pursuit made impossibly difficult where little change is being seen in tackling the emergency.

 

The following statements highlight the impacts of the Emergency that affect the future of the young people we work with and emphasise our decision to declare emergency:

 

  • We have 12 years to make urgent and unprecedented changes. *
  • If we want people who are under the age of 20 to live a full life, we must stop burning fossil fuels now.
  • We agree that to preserve a livable planet, humanity must act immediately. Failure to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will make the extraordinary heat, storms, wildfires, and ice melt of 2020 routine and could “render a significant portion of the Earth uninhabitable.” *

 

* October 2018, International Panel on Climate Change

* January 2021, United Nations Survey

 

 

These are our intentions:

  1. We will tell the truth

Governments, and their public broadcasters and cultural agencies, must tell the truth about the Climate and Ecological Emergency, reverse inconsistent policies and communicate the urgency for far-reaching systemic change. 

We will communicate with citizens and support them to discover the truth about the Emergency and the changes that are needed. 

  1. We will take action

Governments must enact legally binding policy measures to reduce emissions to net zero by 2025 and to reduce consumption levels.

We pledge to work towards reducing our emissions to net zero* by 2025.

We will challenge policies and actions of local and national governments and their agencies, where we interact with them, that do not help to reduce emissions or consumption levels.

We will actively work to imagine and model ways that our organisation can regenerate the planet’s resources. 

  1. We are committed to Justice

The emergency has arisen from deeply systemic injustices. Arts and Culture can imagine, and forge shifts in the ways we relate to one another and the world, in our values and behaviours.

We will do what is possible to enable dialogue and expression amidst our communities about how the Emergency will affect them and the changes that are needed. 

We will support demands for more democracy within our civic institutions and government.

We believe that all truth-telling, action, and democratic work must be underpinned by a commitment to justice based on intersectional principles*, led by and for marginalised people.

 

 

*Net zero means that on balance one’s activities are zero emissions, taking into account all possible Greenhouse Gas emissions and actions taken to mitigate or offset those emissions. 

 

*Awareness of how systems of power combine to multiply the impacts on those who are most marginalised in society.

If you have any thoughts on this work that you would like to share, please get in touch . Contact us via the form below or email us on team@highlysprungperformance.co.uk: