Many people learn about the most important issues of the day from creative mediums. Social content, films, TV, music, theatre, art, live events and immersive experiences are crucial to our understanding of the world around us, allowing us to forge emotional connections with topics that might otherwise be inaccessible. This is particularly true for the most pressing issue of our day: the climate crisis.
A key challenge for the creative industries is to turn words into action by delivering our work sustainably.
I work in a relatively new creative sector, which is also the name of our company: Immersive. When the company was founded almost 20 years ago that word was new and intriguing. Today millions of people use it and associate products with it - it’s an adjective and a verb, and describes a whole industry.
Having worked on a wide range of large-scale projects from the London 2012 Olympics Games, the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the World Expo 2015 in Milan and the Expo 2020 in Dubai that opened last October, our studio has seen the unintended environmental impact of our work; energy-intensive operations, travel and the single-use nature of physical structures, to name a few.
As the industry explores new formats for immersive experiences in the Web3, metaverse and NFT/crypto ecosystems, this issue is on many studios’ agendas. However, for us, who are working to not only place our audience in virtual space, but to keep creating large-scale live experiences - many which likely will exist simultaneously in the physical and virtual space - the need to place sustainability at the heart of our process is paramount.
This begs the question: can large-scale immersive experiences ever be good for the planet and if so, how can we achieve that?
Innovation has always been our driving principle because we believe that fresh perspectives deliver real-world action. Over the past year, we have committed to developing greener solutions for our studio and have taken steps to action that commitment. We’re not there yet, but we are on the journey.
We started the journey evaluating our own operations and every stage of production offers opportunities and challenges to reduce our impact.
Our first step was to integrate sustainability into our company’s core values. To action that, we committed to becoming Net Zero by the end of 2023. This means significantly reducing our carbon footprint and promoting sustainability in all aspects of our work. To help achieve this we are participating in the Mayor of London’s Better Futures+ programme, which provides resources for SME businesses to develop and implement sustainable working practices.
One significant challenge we’re facing on our journey to Net Zero is travel. During the pandemic we delivered major global projects remotely through innovations such as bespoke real-time rendered VR platforms allowing our teams around the world to review the environments we were building simultaneously. However, travel remains a major issue for global projects as we emerge from the pandemic. As we work towards a longer-term solution, Immersive joined Ecolibrium, a community of live industry leaders reducing the impact of their travel and investing in climate solutions that go beyond traditional ‘offsetting’ methods.
Energy usage and data storage are also major challenges for immersive designers, working with energy-intensive technologies, enormous files and acres of servers. While the global and site-specific nature of our work makes energy supply difficult to control, industry leaders must find ways of reducing the energy required to produce these experiences and to utilise renewable energy. And as immersive experiences increasingly become intertwined with Web3, we must shoulder proportionate responsibility for ensuring that the systems making those innovations possible do so without a negative impact.
One opportunity within our work is the multi-use purpose of the environments we create. Our medium relies on creating digital content rather than bespoke physical builds, meaning that, whereas in the past brand new, single-use physical structures would have to have been created for each execution, we can now create re-skinnable environments using equipment and technology that have multiple uses inbuilt.
The final project element that allows us to not only mitigate impact but potentially help the planet is, of course, content. This partially depends on our clients though we strive to work with partners who align with our ethos. But we also seek to weave sustainability and climate action into our work. So, whether it’s our upcoming gallery show that centres on utopian architecture interacting with futuristic landscapes, or our major new museum-based educational project in partnership with WWF; our values are embedded as part of the art, as well as in the process of its creation.
A world in which immersive experiences are produced sustainably with a positive impact on the planet remains a utopian vision, but it’s one that we are committed to making a reality.
Having just spent a week at SXSW, the world’s biggest gathering for the creative industries, I’m encouraged by the many companies embracing this issue. However, it’s still a small proportion of the wider industry and many still treat it as a bonus, rather than integral to their practice.
As an industry, we need to facilitate a complete shift in mindset: sustainability is not optional, but an essential part of securing a viable future for our children. We might not be able to change overnight but we can all commit to joining our journey and that of the many brilliant companies that have taken these steps before us.