Birmingham Hippodrome recognises that what we do today affects the environment for both current and future generations.
We as an organisation acknowledge that climate change is altering the world as we know it, and that accordingly, we will also need to change our policies and behaviour to preserve our planet. We know that culture will have a large impact on the success of sustainability efforts, and as a cultural organisation we can demonstrate how to create positive transformation.
We want to play our part in protecting the local and global environment, and to continuously improve our sustainability performance across all areas – social, economic, and environmental. We take action to ensure that the theatre’s operation is undertaken in such a manner as to have minimum risk on the environment and maximum benefit for our local community.
Environmental awareness has long been a factor in our operations – in 2010, we were proud to become the first UK theatre holding the ISO 14001 accreditation for global standard Environmental Management systems. From 2023 onwards, ‘Sustainable’ has been one of our company values, which are all about who we are, what we believe in, and what sits at the very heart of the Birmingham Hippodrome experience. As part of our five-year plan to improve our offerings to the city, we’re also committed to continuously improving staff working conditions and investing in long-term emissions lowering through a capital project created with the people of Birmingham in mind – a goal we call ‘Hippodrome Tomorrow’. The Five Year Plan can be viewed here and our latest Annual Report tracking our progress towards these goals is here.
To make meaningful progress towards our organisational plan, we will soon publish our new sustainability commitments and action plan here to be accountable to our community in Birmingham and the wider Theatre world. In the meantime, you can view our current environmental and sustainability policy here.
We are proud that the Indigo Act Green survey 2023-2024 showed that 90% of our audience members agree we are important to Birmingham’s community, and that we score above the UK benchmark for our accessibility. However, we know we still need to improve as only 47% of our audience feel that we’re showing how committed we are to sustainability.
We want to hear from you! If you have any feedback, suggestions, or questions about our Going Green plans, please email environment@birminghamhippodrome.com with your comments and we will respond to your message.
We know that we are just starting out on an important journey for Birmingham Hippodrome, but it is one that we are determined to get right, and we invite you to follow our progress. Please click on the photographs below to explore the key areas where we are taking pro-environmental action.
