Ticket To Ride Event Will Highlight Importance Of Sustainable Travel

Perth Theatre and Concert Hall are holding a free, drop-in event to highlight the importance of sustainable travel to their audiences and the wider community.

Taking place on Perth Concert Hall Plaza and in the Concert Hall foyer on Saturday 11 November from 13:00 until 16:00, the afternoon will feature discussions around sustainable travel with invited experts and activists, an art gallery on a converted bus, an orchestra performance, an exhibition of public-transport-themed creative artworks and banners, a film screening and more.

Part of Perth Theatre and Concert Hall’s Transforming Audience Travel Through Art project with Creative Carbon Scotland, Ticket to Ride will open with the screening of a new film created by project artist Helen McCrorie in collaboration with Craigie Choir, exploring buses for communities. Following a performance by Kinross Kacophony orchestra who will arrive on Glenfarg Community Transport minibuses, Margaret Roy, Public Transport Team Leader for Perth & Kinross Council and Ellie Harrison, artist and public transport campaigner will discuss the future of sustainable travel in Perth & Kinross and Tayside with a focus on buses and community transport, followed by a roundtable discussion.

The Travelling Gallery – a contemporary art gallery in a bus - will be parked on the Perth Concert Hall Plaza for the duration of the event with their multi artform exhibition; Take Care by artists including Uma Breakdown, Gwenan Davies, Ellie Kyungran Heo, Laura Wilson and Joy Baek with Sculpture Placement Group.

Exhibition panels in the foyer will display creative work exploring bus travel, its benefits, and barriers to using the bus, produced by Perth Theatre and Concert Hall audiences and at Climate Cafés around Perth & Kinross, with Helen McCrorie.

Commenting on Ticket to Ride, Helen McCrorie said:

“Perth Theatre and Concert Hall audiences have been vocal about what they need, to allow them to access sustainable travel. At Lucy Worsley's sell-out concert hall event, attendees showed overwhelming interest and support for our project. It is clear that our audiences want to use public transport, but they face barriers of sparse services- particularly in the evenings and in rural locations- and are also deterred by high ticket prices for non-bus-pass-holders and for rail. Attendees with disabilities have told us they also need better access to transport services. It is heartening that local Climate Cafés have shown great imagination, coming up with positive solutions to all this through our creative workshops. It has also been inspiring to connect with successful local community transport initiatives, like Glenfarg, that are helping to provide transport for communities, and we hope to build on these relationships.”

Christopher Glasgow, Chief Executive of Perth Theatre and Concert Hall said:

“We’ve had great engagement and interest from audiences and the community in the project so far, from completing our initial survey on how they travel to our venues to taking part in a variety of creative workshops and discussions. Audience travel is one of the largest sources of emissions associated with our work. Whilst we don’t have direct control over how people travel to our venues, it is important for our decarbonisation efforts that we facilitate and encourage more sustainable travel choices. We’re delighted to be working with Creative Carbon Scotland and Helen McCrorie to highlight this in such a creative and collaborative way.”

A free and accessible drop-in event open to people of all ages, Ticket to Ride is part of Perth Theatre and Concert Hall’s Transforming Audience Travel Through Art project, with Creative Carbon Scotland, and funded by Paths for All’s Smarter Choices, Smarter Places programme. The 12-month project seeks to address challenges around audience travel with a view to identifying more sustainable options.

Throughout the project, artist and film maker Helen McCrorie has been organising, researching and conducting workshops with repeat attendees of Perth Theatre and Concert Hall, to learn about their transport methods and travel experiences using her creative methods to document how audiences travel to and from the venues, build a community of interest, and cocreate artistic work to showcase the benefits of, and barriers to, sustainable travel and promote a positive attitude to sustainability.

For more information about this free, drop-in event click here.

Monday 30 October 2023