Environmental Sustainability
Our Ethos
At Jack Drum Arts, we believe in the transformative power of the arts—not only to inspire creativity and community, but also to foster a healthier, more sustainable planet. Our commitment to environmental responsibility is at the heart of everything we do. We recognise the urgency of the climate crisis and have pledged to achieve Net-Zero carbon emissions by 2030 through the SME Climate Hub. By embedding sustainability into our daily operations and creative practice, we’re working to ensure that the arts not only reflect the world we live in—but help reshape it for the better.
Our Strategy
Our approach is both strategic and practical. We rigorously monitor and manage our environmental impact through a detailed annual workflow that ensures transparency and accountability. Using the Smart Carbon Calculator, we measure emissions across key areas:
Scope 1: Direct emissions from our gas usage and fuel bought at pumps (hire vans).
Scope 2: Indirect emissions from purchased electricity, including EV charging for our company van.
Scope 3: Emissions from staff, freelancer and volunteer travel, staff commuting, waste management, and water usage.
We collect and analyse primary data throughout the year, generating a comprehensive Carbon Footprint Report each autumn that guides our ongoing efforts and informs our community partners.
Whether its weighing our waste on “Weighing Wednesdays”, delivering environmentally focused sessions, projects and events, or tracking every staff, freelancer and volunteer journey, our team is dedicated to making small, consistent choices that lead to big change. This isn’t just about compliance — it’s about care: for our environment, our community, and the future generations that we borrow the earth from.
Our Success & Challenges
In October 2023, following a year of data collection, system building and monitoring, and analysis, Jack Drum Arts had its first environmental audit through Genee and Investors in the Environment (iie). We achieved Bronze accreditation for our work, but that was just the start. We knew we needed to do more, and in the two years since we have: collecting primary data with greater detail and accuracy; breaking down sources into sub-categories; requiring more detail from our staff, freelancers and volunteers; and involving our participants in our procedures. Through these improvements our Sustainability Officer has led the organisation to achieving Silver accreditation in November 2025.
We have developed a suite of policies, procedures and plans to ensure our approach remains relevant and renewable, which you can download below. We are committed to improving our practice and the world we all share by using less, thus producing less carbon emissions each year on our trajectory towards Net-Zero.
We are open to the challenges we face. Greatest are our geographic location and the public transport infrastructure serving our region. When combined, these factors give context to our high car-related emissions and our comparatively low bus travel-related emissions.
Jack Drum Arts is rurally based and has a catchment area of more than 30 miles for regular participation. A London equivalent would be people travelling from Luton to Brixton to participate each week - a journey of less than one hour via train and tube. A journey of equivalent distance from Tyneside to our venue in County Durham would take at least twice as long by public transport and involve more changes/transport types. From many smaller villages in our County, a journey to our HQ by public transport is simply impossible.
