Chichester Festival Theatre joins in Green Week fun

Equally you may well have seen some of the grass on the stage before – in a previous production at The National.

Theatres are all about sustainability these days, something the CFT has embedded into its productions – and that’s precisely what Chichester Festival Theatre will be celebrating when it joins a host of activities coming up as part of this year's Green Week.

Angela Buckley, the CFT’s events and Green Book co-ordinator, said: “Green Week is a national event for anybody to celebrate. We have taken part in the last two and this will be our third. It's about celebrating all that we're doing in terms of sustainability and it’s about meeting with the community. We overlap massively with the community in terms of what we are doing. It just so happens that Green Week this year coincides with the Festival of Flowers at the Cathedral and with Chichester in Bloom. It's lovely to get together with everyone and to recognise all that is happening.

“I do carbon literacy training here. It's all about being carbon literate and being able to talk to people about the environment and about the climate crisis. It can be a very heavy subject but there are lots of positive things that are happening and it's great to be able to share those initiatives. At the Festival Theatre we talk about sustainability all the time, and it's all about embedding that into our processes.”

And in a sense it's a question of coming full circle – a return to a make-do-and-mend ethos: “In the theatre you tend to want people to think ‘Oh! That's new!’ rather than thinking ‘Oh! I saw that in the Christmas show!’ In some ways the theatre lends itself all the time to making something new but we really what we want now is for our model to be circular.”

Hence the beams and the grass that you may well have seen before resurfacing now in the Minerva in Eclipse.

“Theatres are good at cooperating. We work on the Theatre Green Book which was set up during Covid to make sure that theatres have a common language when they talk about sustainability.”

The book is an industry-wide initiative aimed at encouraging all theatres work more sustainably in response to the climate crisis. It offers a free resource for everyone in the performing arts, providing a framework for planning, best practice guidance, a measurement system and shared standards.

“Now we can see what we are doing and what we should be doing but it's also about seeing the good things that we are actually already doing.”

Green Week includes a jam-packed day of free activities across Chichester on Saturday, June 6 to raise awareness of climate action in the community. The collective celebration marks the beginning of Great Big Green Week.

As part of the week, Luke Brown Company presents Walk of the Dandelion. Daniel – an 8ft, ethereal puppet – roams through the city. Along the way, he shares gifts of dandelions, each with a message of positivity. Meet Daniel on one of three walks at different times across the city and join a free workshop to make your own dandelion to share along the way.

The timetable for Saturday, June 6 is:

• 10am-4pm. Cathedral Green. Walk of the Dandelion workshops. Free, drop-in workshops. Make a dandelion with a message of positivity to share. Also plant sale. Part of the Festival of Flowers in Chichester Cathedral. Look out for spectacular floral displays in the Cloisters.

• 10am-1pm. The Canopy on Crane Street. Free, drop-in activities for all ages: flower-inspired storytelling with Danyah Miller and Beats for 3, a music group playing recycled instruments.

• 10.30am-2pm. Chichester Festival Theatre, Oaklands Park. Backstage Playbox. An interactive opportunity to explore a selection of CFT's costumes and props. Children can make their own puppets from recycled materials. Also live music. Folky, acoustic duo, Jessy & Levi, will have you foot-tapping from the very first note. Also UK Harvest Community Food Hub. Pick up some fresh ingredients to take home in exchange for a donation. Children can collect compost starter kits, and there’ll be cake tasters made from surplus food.

• 11am-11.45am. Cathedral Green to Pallant House Gallery. Walk of the Dandelion. Walk one: meet Daniel, an 8ft, ethereal puppet, as he gently roams from Chichester Cathedral Green to Pallant House Gallery. A magical experience for all ages.

• 11am-2pm. Pallant House Gallery. Weaving workshops. Free, drop-in workshop led by artist educator Laura Buckle. Take part in two unique weaving activities: create your own woven piece to take home using recycled and natural materials and contribute to a large-scale communal weaving.

• 1.15-2pm. Chichester Festival Theatre, Oaklands Park. Walk of the Dandelion. Walk two: join Daniel as he gently roams around Chichester Festival Theatre and Oaklands Park.

• 2pm-4pm. The Canopy on Crane Street. Decorate and plant an eco-friendly flowerpot to take home with artist Vicky Brown and gardening experts.

• 2.30pm. Cathedral Green. West Sussex Sings. Performance by community choir led by Emily Barden.

• 3.15-4pm. The Cross to Priory Park. Walk of the Dandelion. Walk three: Daniel will be joined by the Town Crier and a band of Morris Dancers as they travel down North Street and Crane Street towards Priory Park. Finish the day by joining the Morris Dancers for a celebratory community dance.

More details on https://www.cft.org.uk/green/green-week-2026 and https://www.cft.org.uk/green/theatre-green-book.