Living Room Cinema -Sustainability
THE BRIEF: The Living Room Cinema opened in April 2021 in Liphook and has already impacted the cinema industry, winning a commendation for small cinema at the 2023 Screen Awards. A single-screen, 60-seat upmarket independent cinema with a tastefully furnished cafe-bar, popular with locals for its ‘always on’ approach, is perfectly targeted at its audience with a range of films and events. It now has a sister cinema in Chipping Norton, the affectionately named Living Room Cinema, Chippy.
The Living Room Cinema (LRC) takes its role in the local community seriously, including its desire to understand its carbon footprint and join businesses worldwide with an action plan to reduce its impact. With concerns about the climate crisis and the damaging effects of business, especially food production, on nature and a particularly holistic view of social impact and governance, LRC’s biggest challenge was knowing where to start.
How does a business implement a sustainability strategy that can a) be enabled straight away for a quick win b) bring the team on board actively, and c) have longevity?
LIVING ROOM CINEMA, LIPHOOK
'Working with Mustard was a game-changer for our sustainability journey. Despite having various measures in place, the desire to do more was hindered by time and resource constraints. Collaborating with Mustard allowed us a brief respite as they took on the heavy lifting. At the end of the project, they not only delivered results but also equipped us with the tools to continue independently. This was a huge relief, and we've already implemented actions that are making a noticeable impact on advancing our sustainability goals.'
Mustard aims to provide small businesses and cinemas, despite the challenging times they are facing, with the inspiration to start making small changes that will make a big difference long term. We partnered with LRC to measure their carbon footprint and support the organisation in developing a sustainability plan.
A critical strategy component is for the team to be fully on board. A business owner may know why changes must be made but also what's important to the team. So, we start with a questionnaire for key information to help us assess carbon measurement and holistically understand the business, ensuring that any recommendations we make align with the company’s goals, values and objectives.
Following the questionnaire, we delivered a bespoke, customised workshop, with thanks to Realise.Earth for their guidance. The workshop took place with the senior team to introduce the SDGS - the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals and explore the connections between three SDGs - 3, 7, 8 - and the cinema. As a result of the workshop, both the GM and CEO realised that there were actions they could take immediately. SDG 13 - Climate Action - was added retrospectively in line with the organisation’s value: Environment.
3 Good Health and Well-being
7 Affordable and Clean Energy
8 Decent Work and Economic Growth
13 Climate Action
We used Julie’s Bicycle’s Creative Climate Tool to measure LRC’s carbon footprint. We combined all the data sets, the questionnaire, research on the venue and the team’s feedback to create a series of recommendations built around the individual sustainable development goals the cinema had identified as ones that resonated with their organisation. We created a toolkit to enable the organisation to keep on track and continuing on their journey.
What really works for organisations like LRC is they can implement these changes without the need for a consultant or lengthy and expensive consultation process, and it’s rooted in tangible and deliverable steps the whole business can get involved with.
Duration: 12 weeks.
Services: Sustainability advice, carbon measurement + action plan recommendations.
Please get in touch if you’d like to implement a sustainability action plan for your business.
