All posts by Bethan Riach

Winners of the Industry Green Survey Prizes

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AND THE WINNERS ARE…

The Industry GreenSurvey is now complete! Over 80 festivals took part, a 60% rise in participation on last year. The results will help us to track industry progress and shape sustainability resources for festivals. We’ll announce the full survey findings in the New Year.

We are delighted to announce that the winners of the ‘Smart Energy Scan’ from ZAP Concepts: a free audit of festival energy to identify where to save fuel & money, are…
Boomtown Fair, Towersey Festival,  Port Eliot Festival, Lambeth Country Show and End Of The Road Festival. The winner of the delegate place for the Green Events & Innovations Conference hosted by A Greener Festival  is Fire in the Mountain.

Congratulations & Thank you to all of the festivals that took part!

(photo credit: Carolina Faruolo/Shambala Festival)

Powerful Thinking Launch 2nd Industry Green Survey

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Powerful Thinking Launch The Industry Green Survey 2016

Powerful Thinking, with support from the AIF, the AFO and Julie’s Bicycle, have launched the second annual industry survey focused on sustainable practices at UK festivals. A year on from the release of their seminal environmental report, The Show Must Go On, and the launch of Festival Vision: 2025, Powerful Thinking will publish a report in December based on the results from this survey, showing the movements in the industry.

By taking a few minutes to complete the Industry Green Survey 2016, event organisers can help Powerful Thinking to track industry progress and shape support for all festivals to move towards sustainable practices, and get entered into a raffle to win one of five ‘Smart Power Scans’ from ZAP Concepts Consultancy — a completely free audit of their festival’s energy to identify where to save fuel and money! Plus, the chance to win a free delegate place at the Green Events and Innovations Conference at the ILMC in March 2017.

TAKE THE SURVEY*

Powerful Thinking is not-for-profit industry think tank working towards an energy efficient, low carbon and cost effective future for festivals. The Show Must Go On report, published in November 2015, outlines the environmental impacts of the festival industry and aims to provide a robust basis for industry-wide action through the Festival Vision: 2025 Pledge which brings together festivals that wish to create a sustainable future. Over 50 festivals have now committed to Festival Vision: 2025 — find out more at www.festivalvision.net 

*Please complete the survey by Nov 30th 2016. Winners announced early Dec.

Festival Awards & Conference logo

UK Festival Awards & Conference to host Festival Vision: 2025 update

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Powerful Thinking’s Chair, Chris Johnson, will deliver an update on the progress and achievements of Festival Vision: 2025 at the 13th edition of the UK Festival Awards & Conference this Nov 28th at the Roundhouse, London.

Last year, at the 2015 UK Festival Awards, Powerful Thinking launched The Show Must Go On, a seminal environmental report on the UK festival industry, before going on to present it at the COP 21 climate change talks in Paris.  As Powerful Thinking celebrates 50 UK Festivals signing the Festival Vision:2025 pledge to act on climate change, Chris will discuss the progress so far and invite more festival organisers to join the biggest environmental movement in the history of the UK festival industry.

The UK Festival Awards & Conference has revealed its first shortlists for 2016. The evening’s Awards are preceded by a comprehensive conference that runs throughout the day and covers the topics of cashless technology, ticketing, virtual reality, the plight of UK nightlife, and disaster planning. Awards present a wide array of accolades across categories that are decided via a combination of public voting and jury panels.

The Powerful Thinking team will be available throughout the conference to talk about the objectives of Festival Vision: 2025 and what organisers can do to take part.

More info about the Festival Awards and Conference and to buy tickets

Showman's show: 50% reduction in diesel due to audit

Powerful Thinking hosts ‘smart power’ panel at The Showman’s Show

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Powerful Thinking is delighted to be hosting the panel for an innovations session on ‘Smart Power for Outdoor Events’ at this year’s Showman’s Show.  The Show returns to Newbury Showground,  Berkshire this October 19 – 20,  with its comprehensive exhibition of products, services and entertainment for the outdoor and special event world.

The panel for the Smart Power session will include Rob Scully, site and production manager and energy consultant, speaking about his great work on sustainability with Glastonbury and other UK festivals; Shaun Pearce, Managing director of Pearce Hire and representative for the Production Services Association, Andy Mead, CEO of Firefly Clean Energy, Laura Pando, previously sustainability coordinator for Festival Republic and now programme manager at Julie’s Bicycle, and Sid Rogerson, who brings his many years of experience as system and power technician to the table. The panel will be hosted by Event PR veteran Graham Brown,  MD of PR Plaster.

“As smarter and more efficient approaches to energy at outdoor events becomes normal, Powerful Thinking presents a panel of leading experts to discuss what practices are working across the sector, trends, and ultimately how to reduce your fuel bill and emissions.”

The ‘smart power for outdoor events’ innovation session will take place on 10 – 10.45am Thursday 20th October.

For more information and to book tickets visit:

showmans-directory.co.uk

ADE Green Conference returns for its fourth edition

ADE GREEN Conference 2016

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Now in its fourth edition, the ADE green conference returns to De Brakke Grond in Amsterdam on October 19th for a day of creativity, practical workshops on sustainability, technological showcases, interactive speakers, debates and inspiring speakers from across the music event industry. 

Sustainability and social change are becoming ever more important for festival organisers. Event organisers and artists are becoming more and more aware of the platform they have and the message they can transmit to their audience, and this shows in the initiatives they support and the change of policies and production methods at festivals. ADE Green brings together brings together promoters, artists, suppliers, policymakers, thinkers, journalists, and more to amplify the industry’s movement towards sustainability and social change: from inspiration to practical action.

Representatives from Roskilde (DK), India’s Longest Guest List (IN), DGTL (NL), Welcome to the Future Festival (NL), Boom Festival (PT) and Ieperfest (BE) will share their experience and plans on how they intend to take action for the future at this year’s ADE Green.

ADE Green is part of industry event Amsterdam Dance Event and is a collaboration between ID&T and ADE, and is supported by Green Events Nederland, Green Music Initiative, Julie’s Bicycle and Open House.

Follow their Facebook event or website for all updates on the program.

Date: Wednesday October 19th
Venue: De Brakke Grond
Tickets for ADE Green (€ 35,-) are available here.

AFO celebrates its 30th Birthday at its Annual Conference

Powerful Thinking Talks Sustainability at The AFO Annual Conference

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The Association of Festival Organisers (AFO) will celebrate the Association’s 30th birthday at the annual AFO Conference on 11-13 November, 2016 at Ettington Chase Conference Centre, Stratford-upon-Avon. Chris Johnson, chair of Powerful Thinking will be there to celebrate the AFO and to host a session on sustainability at festivals for the 250 delegates attending.

Since its formation in 1986, when a small group of like-minded festival organisers got together to chat and share ideas, The Association of Festival Organisers membership has grown to over 200 festival and event organisers, suppliers, agents and freelance individuals.

The AFO Conference is open to all in the industry: delegates are a mix of volunteer and professional festival and event organisers, bringing together teams that have been running for generations with first time organisers, new suppliers with familiar names, programmers and marketing specialists.

From Friday evening to late lunch on Sunday, the session rooms and stages will be buzzing with headline speakers, presentations, discussions, ‘how to do that’ sessions and panel debates. The Trade Market forms the all-important networking hub and two Showcase concerts showcase the best up and coming artists on the festival scene.

Speakers and sessions announced so far:

Sustainability – Chris Johnson (Powerful Thinking)
Health and Safety and Risk Assessments – Mike Richmond (The Event Safety Shop Ltd)
Beginners Guide to running a festival – Steve Heap (AFO)
Eventree case study – Mo Jones (TheTicketSellers) and Jon Walsh (Shambala Festival)
Legal advice with Jon Payne (LSL Solicitors)
Looking after your audience –  Panel includes Dave Boardman (The White Ribbon Campaign) on the safety of women plus speakers on the safety of children and the safety of vulnerable adults.

For a full list of topic sessions and speakers and to book tickets visit the AFO website at www.festivalorganisers.org.

Delegate passes are now on sale at the early bird rate of £110 for AFO members, £135 for non-members (until 31 October 2016). Trade stands are £300 for AFO members and £400 for non-members.

revolutionary off-grid catering concession

Power Behind the Festivals: Off-Grid Catering Concession & Top Tips for using renewables

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As part of the coming updated Power Behind the Festival Guide we are writing a series of case studies of best practice in sustainability at Festivals. The Pembrokeshire Beach Food Company is an example of how a catering concession can meet the challenge of using renewables and save money in the process. Their Cafe Môr trailer offers a range of high quality food inspired by West Wales produce. In March 2015, they won a Sustainable Development Fund (SDF) support from Pembrokeshire National Park Authority to test out an approach that could revolutionise the catering concessions industry and significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).  The SDF support was used to part fund the installation of solar PV panels and a small wind turbine, along with a solar inverter and a battery bank.

Instant benefits to the business included a reduction in generator noise, less staff time required for generator operation and maintenance, fewer trading days lost due to generator issues and increased power security as a result of having a battery back up. In the longer term the new system will also considerably reduce operation costs.

Read the full case study here.

Cafe Mor have also put together some Top Tips for any caterer thinking about making the change to renewables:

Tips for catering concessions on using renewable energy.

Julie’s Bicycle video on the role of arts in environmental change

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Alison Tickle, CEO of Julie’s Bicycle, speaks about the role the arts can play in helping to build a more sustainable society. Julie’s Bicycle is a leading global charity bridging the gap between environmental sustainability and the creative industries. It works to build a creative community with sustainability at its heart, helping over 1,000 arts organisations across the UK and internationally to measure, manage and reduce their environmental impacts.

The video shows their work with artists and organisations and visits a broad range of stakeholders who explain how Julie’s Bicycle are galvanizing the creative industries to create environmental change.

 

Portable Solar Energy by Gaia Group UK

Portable Solar Energy by Gaia Group UK

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We love these new portable solar energy products developed for events by Gaia Group UK renewable energy.

The Solatainer® and Solawedge® have been developed to provide an autonomous off-grid power supply, integrating renewable-power and storage with diesel-power back-up to reduce fuel consumption, carbon emissions and carbon footprint

Created sustainably from a single-use 20ft ISO shipping container, Solatainer® supports a PV array specified for maximum solar gain and efficiency. When equipped with the Solawedge® the unit is scale-able up to 50kw and in its standard setup comprises of a 4Kw PV array, 6Kw/h battery pack and 6Kw stand-by generator.

During daytime operation the energy created by Solatainer®’s PV solar panels is harvested and stored in an on-board lithium ion battery pack. The standby generator is configured to run only when batteries are depleted below a software-set limit or when a demand spike occurs.

The results are spectacular, reducing fuel costs by 80% when compared to a conventional diesel generator.

Solawedge® is a unique, inflatable mounting system that allows rapid deployment across unprepared land or water. Find out more here and watch the video: