The Thelma Hulbert Gallery aims wherever possible to reduce our environmental impact and support our local economy and community.
Local services and products:
- All artists and craftsmen exhibiting in our shop are South West based as are the refreshments provided and we sell Fair Trade coffee
- For our events we use local street food vans, suppliers, practitioners and artists to deliver workshops
- We used local services and materials in our garden regeneration project. For the seating, we used flints excavated from the gallery basement in gabions with sustainably sourced oak tops from the woodland of Ed Brooks Furniture (5 miles away); Tony Benger Landscapers (2 miles away) undertook the hard-landscaping work, local nurseries and orchards Devon Pond Plants, Adam's Apples, Trill Farm and Otter Farm all donated or supplied the plants and fruit trees
- Signage, printing, design work, professional photography are all Honiton or East Devon-based firms including AG Signs
Working with local community, charities and businesses:
- We partner with local businesses via sponsorship and mutually beneficial promotions –eg local restaurant and café Toast and The Holt offer 10% off to members of the Friends of THG scheme. We work together with The Beehive Community Centre and Honiton library to programme and promote events.
- Our learning programme engages the local community and charities - Mind, Honiton Dementia Action Alliance, ROC, local primary and secondary schools
Recycling:
- We have installed a large water butt to collect rainwater from the downpipes to water the vegetables
- We created a highly innovative ‘dry pond’ rainwater garden - a Sustainable Drainage System to prevent flooding - with the help of East Devon District Council’s engineers, designed to harvest surface water that would otherwise run onto the road. This is filled with native pond plants and creates a thriving biodiverse environment for insects and aquatic invertebrates
- We re-used and recycled shrubs and plants from the garden to other areas
- We recycle and compost our waste and all our paper is recycled
- Our art materials are sourced from Exeter Scrapstore – businesses waste paper and products
Involving our staff :
- Staff and volunteers are involved with the decisions about improving our sustainability via our monthly team meetings
- Most of our 30 volunteers are Honiton-based and can walk to THG