What is the Global Voices project?

In 2021, Ecostage and the Society of British Theatre Designers put out a call to people in the performing arts to share videos that reflect their response to the climate emergency. The initial inspiration for this was the development of the SBTD’s carbon literacy training course: as we were building the course, we realised there wasn’t much evidence of how theatre-makers and others were engaging with the climate emergency, and this inspired the idea for the archive.

The project has grown immensely since then. Some films from the archive were featured at CCA Glasgow during Ecostage’s launch at the COP26 People’s Summit, and at World Stage Design in Calgary, in 2022. We will continue to look for other opportunities to show them. And the call for entries remains open indefinitely.

Here’s the trailer:

Join us and other performing arts practitioners in sharing how your work or your communities have been affected by different aspects of the current environmental crises, including changes to the socio-political and economic landscape.

What do we want?

  • You can share a short piece of work, a trailer or an excerpt of a longer work: 10 minutes max.
  • In addition, you can add an introductory film – a couple of minutes filmed on your phone is fine!
  • You can also share a blurb, links to your website, links to longer works, etc. Please at minimum provide a brief text describing the video.

Please have a look at what’s already on the archive before you submit anything.

How to submit entries:

You can either:

  • Option 1. Send us a video file. (All standard video formats are fine. Please use WeTransfer for large files). We’ll post it on the Ecostage YouTube channel.
  • Option 2. Send us a link to a video on your own YouTube or Vimeo channel. We will embed this in our online archive, so you still benefit from the play counts, likes etc. But please note – if you are happy for your video to be considered for screening at events or used for training, we will still need a copy of the video file, in addition to the link.

To submit a video please email admin@ecostage.online with the subject: “Ecostage: global voices”. Please also feel free to email with any queries.

There is no deadline. If any screening opportunities come up we will post the specific deadline for those here and on our social media channels.

Please note:

  • Caption your videos, add full credits, and do not include any elements that might be a problem for copyright or intellectual property. If you’re sending a video file, the captions should be burnt on. We can do this for you if you provide a .srt file. (YouTube’s automatically generated captions can be downloaded in .srt format. However, if you do use YouTube to automatically generate captions, you will need to tidy them up first!)
  • We will endeavour to include all submissions, as long as they reflect actual performing arts-related creative practice, are engaged with environmental/ecological issues, are reasonably well-made and are not offensive, prejudiced or propagating misinformation.
  • Your work remains your own but, unless you say otherwise, by participating you give us the right to show it as we see fit. If you’d rather your work were only used for one thing, eg the online archive but not training, please tell us.

We hope to hear from you!