First National Summit on the Arts and Environment
Published July 22nd, 2008
VIENNA, Va., – On July 14, Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, Americans for the Arts, and The Aspen Institute gathered experts from around the county in the disciplines of the arts, environmental advocacy, engineering, media, and business, to participate in Wolf Trap’s National Summit on the Arts and Environment held at Booz Allen Hamilton in McLean, Virginia.
The intensive summit discussions are the beginning of a new movement within the national arts community and an official call to action. In addition, many major environmental organizations came out of the summit ready to begin thinking beyond the arts only in terms of “star power” or potential celebrity spokespersons. Architect of the first new art museum in the world to receive the LEED certification for sustainable design, Kulapat Yantrasast said, “There are artistic ways to look at the environment and at the same time there are environmental ways to look at the arts – how did we not see that before?”
One of the summit’s hosts, The Honorable Norman Mineta helped lead the call for action by stating, “I am making a commitment to be sure the results of today become more than just a discussion document; that this becomes an action plan rather than a plan collecting dust on a shelf.”
Official recommendations resulting from the summit include the following:
– Establishing a national shared vision for the arts and environment.
– Creating a National Council on the Arts and Environment.
– Creating new pools of money for arts and the environment from public and philanthropic sectors.
– Setting up mechanisms to learn from indigenous models of environmental stewardship.
– Encouraging artists and arts organizations to establish an official environmental starting point – a comprehensive energy, water, resource, community impact, and materials flow baseline.
Americans for the Arts, led by President and CEO Robert Lynch, will be moving the results and strategies forward on a national platform, aided by the committed panelists.
According to Terrence D. Jones, Wolf Trap Foundation President and CEO, the future of the movement is in good hands. “When we started the green initiative at Wolf Trap we did it because it was the right thing to do for Wolf Trap, but we knew we would want to share whatever we found with our colleagues in the arts. This summit has taken the conversation to the next level.”
Musician Kathy Mattea and Kateri Callahan, Executive Director of the Alliance to Save Energy, agreed at the summit that, “if artists are encouraging their audiences to go green, they must be sure that their own backstage operations are green as well.”
And activist Philippe Cousteau, Co-Founder of EarchEcho, pointed out that “the arts reach into so many places to touch everyone’s lives, no matter where they are…It’s not that you (the arts) can make a difference, it’s that, for better or for worse, everything that you do already makes a difference.”
Web site: http://www.wolftrap.org/
