CLIMATE CONTROL

Founder of Plaster Creative Communications, Graham Brown, highlights the importance of tackling climate change in live touring.

Over the past two decades, I’ve enjoyed a fair few bike rides – followed by a fair few refreshing beers – with my old mucker, Andy Lenthall. We’ve also contributed to numerous industry conference panels over the years, talking everything from staging safety to working hours and mental health.

In recent years, we’ve sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the steering group, Powerful Thinking, looking at an issue that is far wider than the live events sector: tackling the climate emergency. Many TPi readers will be familiar with this project, which is dedicated to researching and sharing best practice for outdoor event and festival sustainability.

Formed by Julie’s Bicycle and Shambala’s co-founder, Chris Johnson, in 2000, it’s been a truly collaborative experience. Steering Group members include representatives from trade associations, festivals and suppliers – such as Julie’s Bicycle, PSA, AFO, AIF, NCASS, NOEA, Lansdown Warwick, Festival Republic, Smart Power, Kambe, Zap, Plaster – all giving their time and experience to create a free-to-access knowledge bank via conferences, a website and e-newsletters.

Seven years ago, when I joined the experts sitting around the table, there was already a lot of knowledge and passion focused on festival sustainability. The main focus was on energy use – identified as one of the major contributors to a festival’s onsite carbon, but that was widening to take in all elements of a festival’s carbon impact. There was also an ambition to engage with the industry more widely. These were the pioneers struggling to turn knowledge into action across an industry, and with very little resources.

My modest contribution has been in supporting the effort to communicate their expertise and passion. The warning signs were there – the planet’s ecosystem was in trouble. Julie’s Bicycle created IG tools to measure carbon impact, offered consultancy and mapped out processes enabling venues and organisers to measure the key areas of their carbon impact. A Greener Festival also established the A Greener Festival Award, offering environmental assessments, awards and training assessors to get hands-on in helping festivals measure and reduce their carbon impact. Festivals like Shambala, Green Gathering, Latitude and Greenbelt were the vanguards of sustainable practices, years ahead of the curve with their approaches.

This was all great work. However, only a tiny minority took it seriously. I worked with many clients and saw behind the scenes of a lot of events w h o were at best sceptical or, worse still, dismissive. Sometimes it felt like we were nailing a jelly message to a wall. Five years ago, Powerful Thinking authored the first The Show Must Go On Report, launched at the UK Festival Awards, with chapters covering energy, waste, transport and audience travel, water and food, which began to make waves. The simultaneous launch of Vision:2025, a pledge to achieve a 50% reduction in festival-related carbon footprint, quickly attracted 40 members. Then Sir David Attenborough dragged the plastic issue and wider climate and ecological emergency into the mainstream consciousness.

Greta Thunberg engaged a generation that didn’t care, Extinction Rebellion brought cities to a standstill – and now even Coldplay have stopped touring over climate concerns. Pr etty much every rational person now acknowledges the reality of this climate emergency, and while there may be a few years between forecasts around tipping points, it is universally clear that urgent action is required. Maybe the jelly is now sticking to the wall. There is a growing interest in tackling the climate emergency. This year alone, more than 100 festivals have now joined the pledge to reduce carbon impact by 50%. Th is summer a successful crowd funder smashed its target to fund a second edition of The Show Must Go On Report.

This will be launched in January 2020 as a free-to-access downloadable ‘state of the industry’ report, packed with case studies and inspiration, and accompanied by a first-of-its-kind comprehensive online knowledge hub. This is a key moment for the events industry at a key time for organisers and suppliers to step up to the plate – obviously for sake of the planet, but also to be in step with public opinion and expectations, to be future-proofed businesses in a changing economic landscape and be ready for likely shifts in legislation.

Political parties, councils and companies are setting carbon-neutral targets. Artists are also now waking up to the impact of their tours, while venues and festivals are looking to achieve carbon neutrality and audiences changing their spending habits based on sustainable products. I’d question how achievable some of these targets and claims are from people with little or no experience. We know through the annual Green Survey that only a minority of events, venues or suppliers even know what their carbon footprint is, let alone how to significantly reduce it to become carbon neutral.

But at the same time, I am optimistic that people won’t need to reinvent the wheel. The Show Must Go On Report and Vision:2025 websites will aggregate knowledge from sustainable pioneers across a series of subjects. Energy, waste, management, food, water, transport, audience travel offset schemes and governance are all covered in detail.

For anyone in the event industry looking to reduce their carbon impact, there is a clear road map of the steps required to get there. In ventors and designers are introducing new technology that will no doubt aid the journey – from battery storage to collapsible temporary offices, to water-free loos, plastic-free wristbands and reusable serve ware. Everyone in the industry has the opportunity to step up to play their

part. It’s time to set ambitious, but realistic targets. If the promoters – take Live Nation’s Green Nation carbon-neutral pledge, for example – artists, sponsor brands and venues are moving towards carbon neutrality, the supply chain needs to match that. Live music has always been a nimble, creative sector and I am sure that the manufacturers and suppliers succeeding in five years’ time will be the ones with the vision to invest in their own, and the planet’s, futures. Cr eating a circular economy is at the core of managing resources better, but we must also be wary of this approach being used to defend the status quo in terms of single use, for example. Fo rward-thinking manufacturers are now designing products that are re-usable, or at least easily recyclable, that don’t end up as waste, which is a key step. Introducing fresh processes and behaviours that achieve very different outcomes from those over the past decades is vital, in the context that waste and emissions output has continued to grow despite advances in science in the past decade. Li ke many, I am inspired by the recent video with Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot, for its clarity and impact. Their message is indicative of a growing movement advocating that we need to go beyond being carbon neutral and toward being regenerative – actually putting back into the ecosystems to give them a chance of absorbing enough carbon and surviving the challenge of providing for growing population. The key is that the sector acts now. I urge all TPi readers to get involved. Log into the Powerful Thinking website to receive your free The Show Must Go On Report in January, engage in the website moving forward to learn and contribute your learnings to this important journey we’re all on.

TPi

www.vision2025.org.uk

www.powerful-thinking.org.uk

www.juliesbicycle.com

www.agreenerfestival.com