This is the THIRD most impactful decarbonization strategy globally, after only Reduced Food Waste and Plant-Rich Diets. In the final days of Women's History Month, it seems fitting to discuss Sustainable Development Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls!

So today I had planned to write about the next Sustainable Development Goal but I have not had the opportunity this week to write thoughtfully about how it applies to costumes so that will have to wait!

Sustainability is simply a design challenge, and a Climate Disaster is a failure of imagination. Sure, a certain amount of climate change is now “baked in” and already impacting us, but that doesn’t have to mean absolute disaster, we have many of the tools needed to fix the crisis, we need the courage to imagine a future more glorious than our present.

As costume artists, learning about these will help us in conversations with leadership about budgets, and ensure that our actions are a part of a larger push for a more equitable world.

I encourage you to read this important book about the state of chemical additives in the growing, dying, finishing, and more of our garments! Even if you don’t work in costume, you wear clothes (I assume!) so this is good for everyone to know.

I regret that it’s been so long since I’ve written, but you’ll be hearing from me a lot more in the coming months! Here's a little digest of news stories that I think will kick off 2024 on a hopeful note:

Lately, for my day job, I’ve been doing work with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (or SDGs) and I think there is potential to apply many of these ideas to the work we do in theatre, arts, and performance.

Pivoting somewhat away from written sources this week to be inclusive, and this is what’s resonated with me most lately!

Okay, I TOLD you all that I would struggle with a weekly post, so here’s a little extra digest of things that have caught my attention since I last updated you.

I’m embarrassed… It’s been a year since I wrote here, and I cannot tell you how touched I am that so many of you have hung in and supported Conscious Costume during this past year.

Here is a list of the resources we cited in our Plastic Free July posts, click on the quote for full context and credit.

We will update this post throughout the month as we add more plastic free research.

In theatre design, we are comfortable with the concept of Scarcity; Scarcity of time. Scarcity of resources. Scarcity of money.  These are the confines within which we design, the are the limitations that inspire us to be creative but are also the source of our greatest stress. While we are intimately familiar with Scarcity, how on Earth can we imagine Enough, or even Abundance?