Hope Solutions’ Luke Howell discusses sustainable touring.

HOPE SOLUTIONS

On the front line of the industry’s move to a more sustainable future, having worked on Glastonbury Festival as well as consulting for Coldplay, Shawn Mendes, and the Co-op Live, Luke Howell highlights how Hope Solutions is primed to assist in bringing sustainable practices to the live events sector.

Photos: Hope Solutions Words: Luke Howell

I was born in East Anglia into my parents touring circus – Croissant Neuf – which, in the mid ‘80s, decided to ditch generators and switched to using renewables such as solar, wind and recycled batteries to power the entire show. In 1992, during the Rio Earth Summit, my parents took the circus to a vast sustainability event at Birmingham’s NEC called The Green Show where they realised that sharing information about the environment was essential but needed to reach a wider audience, so the circus evolved into a touring eco-exhibition centre – The Green Roadshow.

From a young age, I was immersed in environmental campaigning and sustainable event production as if it was the norm rather than being something to switch over to and I was fortunate to grow up touring the UK and Europe surrounded by some of the brightest minds in the sector, learning many of the wider concepts and considerations relating to sustainability as well as delivery of world class event production.

As a teenager, I became interested in production, and started to work on projects outside of those with my parents such as The Greenfields at Glastonbury. As well as working at Edinburgh Fringe and other festivals, I launched my own event – Croissant Neuf Summer Party – where between 2007 to 2013, we put on a truly carbon neutral event and hosted artists such as Ed Sheeran on a solar powered stage.

Working on other people’s projects made me realise how little was being done with regards things, such as energy efficiency and power management, waste and recycling and low carbon transport. Around this time, with events being more seasonal, I also worked in other sectors such as eco-construction and renewable energy, which gave me an even broader range of knowledge in sustainability.

In 2015, after working on the European Green Capital in Bristol, I gradually began to focus on becoming a sustainability consultant, and as such, I became a Fellow of IEMA, Chartered Environmentalist and Fellow of the RSA. It was around this time when Hope Solutions was born.

Originally, we worked mostly on festivals, along with various pieces of work within music, visual arts and theatre. Over the next couple of years things got busier and I worked in collaboration with a handful of others in the industry as project scope grew – notably Rob Scully and Paul Schurink of ZAP Concepts and Tim Benson of Smart Power UK. In 2019, the team grew with Emily Ford, former sustainability coordinator at Live Nation and Festival Republic, joining the team.

We were all set for an extremely busy 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic struck and overnight, like many others in the industry, we lost around 90% of our work. In its own way though the time and headspace that the pandemic afforded us meant I was able to take stock of things and reset and Hope Solutions started to find other avenues of work within the wider media and entertainment industry – working with suppliers and businesses in the entertainment supply chain such as digital services and logistics.

Fast-forward another couple of years and Hope now has several extremely talented and knowledgeable teams working on some major

projects across the industry. We generally do our work in the background so not everyone has heard of us but we believe action speaks louder than words so we’re busy just getting on. Someone recently described us as ‘the industry’s secret weapon in tackling climate change’ – a title we are most proud of. We are not a campaign, charity or membership organisation, we are specialist technical consultants with deep roots in entertainment, environmental science and climate action.

A SEA CHANGE When Hope started people were not quite so receptive to the issues we were raising but things were starting to change pre-pandemic and haven’t really slowed. I remember David Attenborough’s Blue Planet showing plastic waste in the oceans being a bit of a turning point in 2018, when suddenly people wanted to do their bit. The climate crisis hasn’t gone away, the effects are only getting worse and more visible so most people we speak to want to do things differently and reduce the negative impacts associated with some parts of how the industry operates. Increasingly people want to take a science-led approach backed up by recognised standards and best practice, which is our area of speciality.

The entertainment industry is one of the most creative on the planet but there are still plenty with the ‘but we’ve always done it that way’ mind-set. But the general mood seems to be one of open optimism. There are still a number of misconceptions we see around the topic such as assuming that anything to do with sustainability must also be expensive, not to mention teams jumping into offsetting before understanding what their actual impacts are or signing up to pledges or campaigns without a plan. My advice is that not everything needs to happen today; it’s a process.

There is an argument that doing something is better than doing nothing, however we are at a point where it is essential to tackle some of the issues in a serious way and to do so with a measured approach that builds long-term resilience.

WHAT CAN BE DONE? One starting point could be what we do with many of our clients: measure, eliminate, reduce, mitigate, offset, and repeat. With data and evidence then proper changes can be made and real reductions achieved. The other thing that is essential is broad communication with all the stakeholders involved in a project or tour – it’s not enough for a band, artist and production team to do it alone, it needs the buy-in from labels, promoters, venues, suppliers and the fans.

In general, most carbon emissions come from travel, transport and energy – anything linked to the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. These are some of the biggest areas that need to be tackled and can be one of the best ways to reduce the associated impacts. Use less, travel with less, be more economical with what you are using and there will be a financial and environmental benefit. We are spending a lot of time supporting the industry to use its position with global audiences to highlight the climate crisis without it feeling hopeless. We don’t want there to be less tours, concerts and festivals, if anything, there’s a strong argument for there being more and taking shows to people to help reduce fan and audience travel, just as long as the tour itself is as low emissions as possible. www.hopesolutions.services

A blast from the past - photos from Luke Howell’s life including sights of the Croissant Neuf Summer Party and its solar-powered stage as well as Howell with his parents and their touring circus.