The Green Events & Innovations conference (GEI) returns to the the Royal Garden Hotel next week, Tuesday 5 March, bringing industry leaders and professionals together to discuss environmental and social sustainability at live events.

This year’s new format includes case studies, discussion panels and presentations from around the world, networking breaks, and closing party to increase the opportunity for delegates to connect with the festivals, event organisers, venue owners and sustainability experts of GEI. Check out the full programme and buy tickets: 

agreenerfestival.com

The Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) will host a sustainability training day to offer festival organisers practical tips and information on running more sustainable events on Monday 4 March, at Wilton’s Music Hall, London.

Powerful Thinking’s Tim Benson and Chris Johnson will be speaking around the topic of efficiency in powering events alongside Julie’s Bicycle, NCASS and Energy Revolution alongside AIF members including Boomtown Fair, Shambala and Greenbelt.

Topics will include: green riders, energy supply & consumption, reducing pointless plastics, reusable cup systems, audience transport, eco wristbands, food waste, communicating sustainability and more, through a combination of quick-fire talks and in-depth group-based workshops. AIF Members receive a 50% discount on tickets. 

Find out more and book tickets: www.aiforg.com

The team at Boomtown have a strong commitment to running the event sustainably. In 2016 they took the Festival Vision:2025 pledge to act on climate change, pledging to cut the CO2 footprint of the event by 50% by 2025 and targeting areas such as fuel use, waste, food and transport. With audience travel accounting for up to 80% of the average festival’s carbon footprint, it is clearly a key area to focus on. 

Boomtown’s recognition of the need to tackle audience travel lead them to collaborate with the teams behind Kendal Calling, Bluedot, Shambala and Secret Garden Festival to set up Energy Revolution in 2015. The charity works with festivals and their audiences, suppliers and artists to calculate the CO2 emissions from travel to events, reduce it where possible and balance unavoidable emissions with investment in projects that create renewable energy.

Realising that reducing travel related emissions is the first step, Boomtown have a number of initiatives in place to engage their audience suppliers and artists in travelling sustainably. They work with dedicated coach companies and promote discounted ‘Public Transport Saver’ tickets to their audience which include coach and shuttle bus travel and the option to arrive at the event a day early at no extra cost. In fact, everyone who travelled by coach, train, bike or shared their car (3+) is invited to arrive a day early! In 2018 they worked with Red Fox cycling to offer a guided 2-day cycle experience from Bristol to Boomtown and in 2019 they are extending their ‘Boomtown Bike Ride’ by offering a London – Boomtown route.

By incentivising sustainable travel in 2018 they encouraged 35% of audience arrived by coach or train.In 2018 Boomtown gave £1 from every audience car-parking pass to Energy Revolution to invest in renewable energy to help balance CO2 emissions. So far they’ve supported their audience in donating over £10,000 to balance their travel emissions. 

This year they want to increase this positive impact by giving the artists and contractors travelling to the event the chance to balance their travel emissions too.  In 2019 Boomtown are introducing a “Green Ambassador” initiative as part of the artist sustainability campaign for 2019. Artists can pledge to balance all of their travel to and from site in return for being awarded a green leaf emoji next to their programme listing.   

To benchmark travel data, identify new areas to tackle and to help quantify the success of their car-sharing incentive, Boomtown worked with Face Your Elephant to carry out a car park survey. Over two thousand vehicles were surveyed, counting the number of people, the number of vehicles and the fuel type from Wednesday – Sunday.  The results showed that Boomtown effectively managed to gain above average car occupancy on the Wednesday proving the early day entry initiative was successful. 

Find out more about Boomtown’ environmental mission here. 

International not-for-profit organisation A Greener Festival (AGF) has announced the 35 recipients of Greener Festival Awards 2018.

Thirty-five festivals and events from 14 countries achieved the prestigious accolade in 2018, which is awarded to those events and festivals that have demonstrated conscientiousness with regards to sustainability and a reduction in environmental impacts in 11 areas including transport, waste, power, water, and local area impacts. Applicants undergo a rigorous assessment, site visit and post-event analysis of their events’ sustainability actions.

AGF Directors Ben Challis, Claire O’Neill and Teresa Moore presented awards to a host of worthy recipients that included Das Fest, Germany; DGTL, Netherlands; Pohoda Festival, Slovakia, and Ireland’s Body and Soul.

Xander Kotvis, Revolution Manager of DGTL Festival Amsterdam, one of seven events to receive an Outstanding Award – Greener Festival Awards’ highest accolade – commented: “The Outstanding Award is a crown on many years of hard work. With this prize, we demonstrate that it is possible to implement circular systems without having to compromise on quality or experience. We believe that this is the best way to introduce the world to a new economic paradigm, in which we distance ourselves from our current linear (take-make-waste) behaviour.”

Another event, Boomtown Fair, applied for the award assessment and feedback for the first time in 2018. Sustainability Manager Emily Ford said, “We are delighted that we obtained the Commended Award from AGF. That highlights the positive action we are taking. It’s a great start to our mission to ensure that we significantly reduce the environmental impact of the event, as well as raise awareness on just how vital it is that we all pull together to protect the planet for future generations.”

Co-founder/Director of A Greener Festival, Claire O’Neill, commented, “This year has seen unprecedented action and an awareness of the urgency to make our industries and our lives more harmonious with nature. The festivals and events that we have had the honour to assess and award are helping to shape this transition, which has positive repercussions not only within the events’ operations but also through the message and example they put out into the world.”

AND THE WINNERS ARE…

OUTSTANDING
Boom Festival (PT)
Cambridge Folk Festival (UK)
DGTL Festival (NL)
Green Gathering (UK)
Øya Festival (NO)
We Love Green (FR)
Wood Festival (UK)

HIGHLY COMMENDED
Body & Soul (IE)
Dubcamp Festival (FR)
Greenbelt Festival (UK)
Paradise City (BE)
Rainbow Serpent (AU)
Roskilde Festival (DK)

COMMENDED
Boomtown Fair (UK)
Das Fest (DE)
Fire In The Mountain (UK)
Hadra Trance Festival (FR)
Kew the Music (UK)
Mandala Festival (NL)
Metal Days (SI)
Pete the Monkey (FR)
Pohoda Festival (SK)
Primavera Sound (ES)
Spring Utrecht (NL)
Wonderfeel (NL)

IMPROVERS
BST Hyde Park (UK)
Couvre Feu (FR)
De Poupet (FR)
ILMC (UK)
Les Escales (FR)
Manchester Pride (UK)
Own Spirit Festival (ES)
Terraforma Festival (IT)
Utrechtse Introductie Tijd (UIT) (NL)
Uitfeest (NL)

Powerful Thinking’s 4^thannual Festival Industry Green Survey is now live! First run in 2015 by Powerful Thinking, with support from the AIF and AFO, the Festival Industry Green Survey provides information on how the industry is doing in terms of sustainability and helps Powerful Thinking identify how to support positive changes.

The survey asks event organisers what sustainability practices they have in place and about their aspirations and priorities for the coming year. All participants to complete the survey will be entered into a raffle to win a free ticket for the Green Events & Innovations Conference 2019 on Tuesday 5th March 2019 at the ILMC.

TAKE THE SURVEY HERE

Information collected through previous surveys significantly contributed to the Show Must Go On report (2015) and the launch of Festival Vision: 2025, a shared vision for a sustainable festival industry. The survey was repeated to track progress in 2016 & 17 and now three years on, with 75 UK festivals having taken the Festival Vision: 2025 pledge, Powerful Thinking want to find out, and report back on industry progress.

Please complete the survey by 21st December. The winner will be announced in January 2019.

The annual AFO conference in November focused on sustainability this year by leading the first day with a session called ‘A Blue Planet wakeup call’ which invited guests to talk about the environmental impact of events and the initiatives that can help in the move towards sustainability.

Powerful Thinking’s Chris Johnson chaired the session with panel guests, Teresa Moore (A Greener Festival), Mary Corfield (Greenbelt Festival), Tim Benson (Smart Power Ltd), Mark Laurie (8th Plate) and Liz Warwick (Lansdowne Warwick).

Chris Johnson was later celebrated with an AFO award for his ‘Heroic Campaigning in Sustainability’ which was presented by the AFO’s General Secretary, Steve Heap .

Plans are underway for the 3^rd annual meeting of the 70+ festival organisers who have signed the Vision:2025 pledge with Powerful Thinking to cut the environmental impacts of their events by 50% by 2025.

The Showman’s Show organisers, Lance Show & Publications Limited, underline their commitment to sustainability in hosting the Vision:2025 event for the second year running on Wednesday 17^thOctober. The afternoon event will be a chance for the Vision:2025 festival teams to share ideas and learn more about the new suppliers, organisations and communities that are helping the industry move towards more sustainable practices.

The event will highlight the power of collaboration and what can be achieved when festivals and suppliers work together: with updates on industry initiatives, latest research, presentations, panels, Q&As, roundtable sessions, and a chance to continue the conversation over an ethically-brewed beer at the networking drinks. This year the Vision:2025 programme will also include a live judging panel for The Showman’s Show 2018 Green Supplier Award.

Here’s a taster of the programme but a full speaker and guest information will be release in September:

• The Industry Energy Briefings session showcases new supplier services, products and best practice around; the future of transport at events; embedding sustainability right from the outset through careful sourcing and smart contracts; and the new technology that is making power monitoring and efficiency more accessible to festival teams.
• Festival Focus Panel/Q&A: Festival organisers who are leading the way in approaches to waste, power and transport share the initiatives that have worked in the past season and the challenges they faced along the way – with host Steve Heap from the Association of Festival Organisers.
• The ever-popular ‘roundtable’ session returns offering Vision:2025 members the chance to ask experts and guest suppliers specific questions relating to their events.Topics include: Let’s talk toilets, Power: the nitty-gritty, Tackling travel, and hot topic, Cutting waste plastics.
• Showman’s Show Green Awards 2018: YOUR VOTE COUNTS:  The 2018 supplier shortlist present their products and services to the audience and live judging panel.
• The ‘A Toast to the Future’ panel and Q&A explores how festivals can cut bar waste,  the latest knowledge and best practice around alternatives to single-use plastics.
• Building Community: The ‘Join Us’ session introduces the organisations and initiatives that are bringing Arts communities together around positive change: Including Julie’s Bicycle on monitoring, recording and target-setting and charity Energy Revolution on bringing events, suppliers, artists and audiences together to tackle CO2 emissions from travel.
• Networking drinks 

Registration for Vision: 2025 members is now open: REGISTER HERE

If you are not yet a Vision:2025 member but would like to attend the event you can sign the Vision:2025 pledge here.

Contact bethan@powerful-thinking.org.uk for more information.

Photo credit: George Harrison for Shambala Festival