Anne Kleiner and Ann-Sophie Reiser are responsible for sustainability at Theater der Welt Festival in Frankfurt am Main and Offenbach. In conversation with Bettina Sluzalek, they tell us about the festival’s sustainability strategy, challenges in implementing it and its potential for reuse.

We started working on the issue in 2022 and at that time the Institut für Zukunftskultur attracted our attention because of their experience and expertise in the cultural sector and with theatre festivals. Before that we had also spoken to other institutions, but in the end, we stuck with the Institut für Zukunftskultur. The Aktionsnetzwerk Nachhaltigkeit (Sustainability Action Network) was still in the process of being set up, later on we also talked to Jacob Bilabel about how the issue of sustainability can work in a festival context like this.          

And how does it work, how were you advised, what recommendations were given to you?

We started with an input workshop, which was about what sustainability actually means. It was an awareness workshop, because of course not everyone in the team has the same or similar understanding of what the concept means. There were three workshops in total with Tabea Leukhardt, director of the Instituts für Zukunftskultur, and Rebecca Heinzelmann, a sustainability manager for cultural organisations, who is specialised in theatre and festivals. Both of them came to see us at least three times and advised the team internally. We went through which areas of action there are in an international festival, which ones we really wanted to address and which we might not manage. For example, the flights, can we compensate them, what options are there? The whole team examined all the workflows and then developed areas of action and measures. Then the consultants joined us again and in the third workshop we prioritised the measures in a materiality analysis. That way we figured out which measures we were going to try to implement.

Before we get to the specific measures, I’d also be interested to know how much capacity your team had. At the Schlossfestspielen festival, our experience was that analysis and implementation take up a lot of time, time that can’t be spent on other tasks. How did you deal with that?

We began with the premise that the whole team would work on the issue so that everyone was starting on the same page and with a solid foundation. Then everyone got to grips with the issue in their own departments and thought about how it could be integrated into their areas of responsibility. As time passed and the festival approached, it became more and more difficult for them to be able to get involved and execute the measures consistently. In my opinion, there needs to be one person executing these measures and who’s exclusively responsible for them; it’s a job in itself. The amount of time the person in this position should invest on preparation and implementation is open to discussion, but essentially you need one person who’s only working on this issue and implementing it.

So what measures were you able to or did you implement?

The first was a cooperation with Nextbike, the bike rental company. It was a long process, but in the end the artists, participants of the Academy and team were able to use a rental bike at a reduced rate or for free. Nextbike wasn’t actually in Offenbach yet, but virtual stations were installed in Offenbach especially for the festival to create a connection between Frankfurt and Offenbach. Otherwise, they would have had to get off just before the border and leave the bike there.

Then printed materials, from printed products to banners, the press and marketing department did quite a lot of research into that. Okay, the ‘blauer Engel’ (a German environmental label) on paper, we all do that these days anyway. But we also looked at what a sustainable printing press is and what kind of materials we could use for banners, for example. That was really a huge amount of research.

Yes, that’s true! At the end of the day, however, a lot of these things don’t work out because of lack of time, because these processes take more time, the more sustainable the product is. And sometimes in this festival, as it so often is unfortunately, we didn’t have a lot of time to make it happen. That’s why we failed in some points, to have things manufactured sustainably for example. After the festival we tried to reuse some of the materials. So we had the banners turned into hip-bags. But they’re all things that ultimately lie with the institutions running the festival, not the festival itself.

That means the planning and preparation for the measures should start earlier?

Exactly, it should be started earlier. Although it also has an effect on other areas of work, for example artistic programming, which of course primarily has a different interest, namely having as much time as possible for developing and finalising the programme. These two needs just don’t fit together, especially in a festival that is organised as a one-off event.

How did the team, the artists and the audience respond to the measures?

I’d say that it wasn’t an issue at all in the team, partly because we did such good groundwork in the awareness workshops. It was more of a problem that we didn’t have enough time to implement everything, which led to feelings of regret. Everyone was very committed.

I think there were people who actually wanted to implement more measures, but then that failed because of lack of capacity.

And the audience and the artists, could the audience use the bikes etc. too?

There were vouchers for Nextbike in the programmes and public transport tickets included with the show tickets, people used them a lot. Especially for the journey between Frankfurt and Offenbach, the fact that people could just use public transport with the ticket for the show, we got a lot of positive feedback about that.

What other measures did you implement, for example with catering? In Ludwigsburg, for example, we worked with a zero-waste shop to reduce rubbish and the artists received tree certificates for trees that were planted, instead of flowers – did you do similar things?

There were various challenges with the catering, because we had ten different venues, some of which had infrastructure, some of which didn’t. If there was already an infrastructure, we had to weigh up how much capacity we could additionally invest. The catering at the Mousonturm is vegetarian anyway and if we had additional catering, then that was vegetarian or vegan too. We looked at what we already had, what we had to work with and where we were able to influence it.

There were various challenges with the catering, because we had ten different venues, some of which had infrastructure, some of which didn’t. If there was already an infrastructure, we had to weigh up how much capacity we could additionally invest. The catering at the Mousonturm is vegetarian anyway and if we had additional catering, then that was vegetarian or vegan too. We looked at what we already had, what we had to work with and where we were able to influence it.

That’s my next question, where did you reach limits?

That was definitely a limit. You don’t have to reinvent the whole world straight off the bat, but I did wish that we could have had these talks earlier, even if they wouldn’t have led to a visible implementation. That we could have held an awareness workshop not just for Theater der Welt 2023 team members, but for the institutions involved too.

Is there anything else where you’d say, we reached a limit there or our ideas didn’t work out?

I think there were a lot of smaller limits, especially in the tech area. At some point we just had to leave it aside, to be honest. We rented a lot of things and it was hard to say, eh, by the way, have you ever thought about sustainability? We just didn’t have the time or the staff. We’re still learning how much time, how many people, how much money is needed in the first place to design these processes in a more sustainable way and implement them.

Yes, measures like that are often more expensive, starting with green energy, catering and so on. What was your experience with the funders, did they support you or were there problems with the higher costs?

We had already outlined the additional costs in the cost and financial plan, but the point about compensation for flights especially led to discussions. Since the basic financing of the festival is funded by three main funders, the federal, state and municipal governments, we faced different attitudes to the issue of flight compensation. The attitude changed over the years we were preparing and running the festival. That means we were continually asking, are we allowed to do this or not, but at the end of the day, they all said, yes, you can. Since we only had a limited budget for sustainability in the festival, but also had accessibility and awareness, over the course of time, the decision was made to prioritise accessibility, which meant there was no longer a huge amount of funding left to implement or finance sustainability measures – more funding would be needed here so that the artistic programme doesn’t suffer. As well as that, some measures can only be implemented by the executing institutions (for example the use of green energy), Theater der Welt itself has barely any influence on that, unless it becomes one of the criteria for selecting the venue.

Sometimes funding guidelines even stipulate that you must work as climate-neutrally as possible, e.g. with the Fonds Zero.

Exactly, but that wasn’t the case for us. Fonds Zero is a very specific funding programme, which was developed especially for that. Concerning the festival, we’re working in a totally different area of funding. This festival is funded explicitly to bring an international, high-quality programme from all over the world to one place, one region. That’s the focus of the funding and the main aim is not about being sustainable, like it is with Fonds Zero. 

Do you think it should be more about that? Opinions are actually divided about that. Some people say everything should be made obligatory, otherwise nothing will happen, other people say, it’s an encroachment on artistic freedom, on personal freedom.

I think it’s a delicate balance. An international festival can’t ignore the issue of sustainability, but at the same time, the festival’s objectives make some measures simply impossible. And we have to be careful that endeavouring to create more sustainable festivals does not lead to exclusionary measures that reproduce post-colonial structures, so like: because you come from the global south and have to fly so far because of that, unfortunately you can’t come, because it’s not good for the environment.

The text “Cultural mobility and environmental sustainability” by Ukhona Ntsali Mlandu is about that, she writes that we’re starting from very different premises. It’s also about how power and resources have been organised historically and are organised now, and how we might want to organise them in future. And of course, also that we often reproduce post-colonial structures in our sector, because the money comes from here and that creates new forms of dependence. How do you deal with that?

That’s an issue that we were and are aware of, which actually is permanently present in the Mousonturm’s practice. We’re a theatre that produces and presents international work. We live off that and at the same time we’re also sitting on the money and make the decisions. In the context of the festival, we tried to see how we could integrate artists who have to travel further in a different way, which didn’t just mean appearing in two shows at the festival. We’re not interested in whether we have the European or German premiere. We’re interested in artists touring and if possible, have other shows before and after. Not just because of sustainability, but also to give the groups a different visibility, the chance to make more money, present their work in different places. It’s about them performing and not that they’re only performing at our venue. At the same time, we look at how we can manage to offer competitive fees. Sometimes we’re more successful in this, sometimes less.

In our festival, we orientate ourselves around the SDGs, so we also have a strategy for including social sustainability. How sustainable was your festival in terms of content and the artistic programme? Could the projects and productions get something moving, change something, were there consequences?

What was special about this edition of the festival, in my opinion, was that we had an international curator, who came from a different cultural context. This landed us right into the debate of who has the money and who makes the decisions. We had to discuss these questions, and sometimes they got somewhere and sometimes we failed because it’s so incredibly complex.

Could you tell us a bit more about that?

Sure, we reached certain limits, cultural boundaries and the language barrier. We were all not working in our native language, misunderstandings are inevitable. Secondly, coming from different cultures means a different way of understanding things, for example different areas of work. We probably should have had an intercultural consultant accompanying the whole thing, saying, have a conversation about job profiles, how do you see a certain job profile, what tasks does it involve? Take time to do that, then you’ll have already cleared a lot of misunderstandings out of the way.

I was just thinking about the programming again, we haven’t talked about that yet. “Abana bamazi” (Children of the Water) by Small Citizens just popped into my mind, which was part of the programme for young audiences, but also specifically addressed older people. That play deals with the global history of water and how this resource is disappearing in many regions of Africa. They presented the issue very well, playfully and easy to understand, in no way accusatory. Also “Ultimate Safari” by Flinn Works, an immersive piece using VR technology and live performance, that addressed social sustainability. You sat in a room and took a safari through a national park and at the same time it was shown how this is still a very colonial practice.

Another one that springs to mind is “El Warcha” (The Workshop). A Tunisian collective who work with materials that are available on site. The artists worked with school classes to build seating, table-tennis tables, sculptures and slides out of available materials in various different workshops, and they created a flexible space, you could hang out there, talks were held there, there were workshops for kids and adults. In the end, the pieces that had been built were auctioned so they could be brought back to the schools.

That’s definitely a form sustainability too, projects that inspire, that highlight problems and possibilities and in the best case have lasting results. I think we haven’t just learned a lot about the possibilities and limits of ecological sustainability in an international festival, we’ve learned a lot about the possibilities and limits of working transnationally too. Thank you very much!