Dependent on attracting participants from the far-flung corners of the country or even the world many festival organisers are increasingly concerned about the carbon footprint left by their events. But can festivals ever be truly environmentally friendly? Christopher Maughan explores the issues.
The transformative power of festivals for artists, audiences and their locations is well documented. People flock to cities like Edinburgh and Brighton and to more rural locations such as Hay-on-Wye and Brecon, to participate in something that will have a lasting affect on them. What, however, they may give less thought to is the transformative effects of their participation on the locations themselves.
Conflicting interests
In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore drew our attention to the deeper consequences of the movement of people on which many festivals depend. Gores 2006 film is the outcome of a crusade he began with a simple lecture in 1989, but it is only in the past three or four years that such discussion has really begun to impact on the festivals sector. Taking stock of the form of impact that festivals are having is now a major question for many festival organisers and will be on the agenda when the British Arts Festivals Association (BAFA) holds its annual conference in Buxton next month.
The critical issue is one that all readers of Arts Professional will understand: how can arts organisers square the desire and need to increase audiences and to internationalise their programmes with the need to reduce their impact on our environment? After all, the financial well-being of many of their events is inextricably tied to moving people around (cultural tourism and economic impact studies are manifestations of this). If we do not do the one, then we do not have the other.
Taking action
So a question appears to be what can we do to limit their impact? Is it possible to be sustainable in environmental terms? Is it possible to leave no trace as one website suggests? The obvious changes are ones that are already being explored by small and large festivals alike. Litter campaigns, waste recycling and shared transport schemes are all prominent features of the festival literature as seen at festivals this summer and on many websites. Amongst the bigger rock music festivals, Sziget in Hungary and Glastonbury in the UK both have set out their agendas for reducing their undesirable environmental impacts.
At Sziget, where over 400,000 people gathered for the week-long festival, the organisers and participants not only think comprehensively about the five continents when compiling the cultural programmes. They believe that the natural environment needs to be protected, because it has a leading role in making mankinds culture so colourful and comprehensive. Sziget has been working with local environmental organisations for many years to ensure the selective collection, transporting and recycling of waste materials. Today, selective waste collection plays an organic part in the everyday life of the Festival and is exemplary in developing an environment-conscious attitude in Hungary as a whole.
This year, Glastonbury Festival and Greenpeace presented the second Green Traders award, recognising the four stalls which have done most to give their businesses a low environmental impact. The festival also continued its own established programme of recycling and, despite the bad weather, festival-goers did their part to keep it clean and keep it green! And of course everybody at the festival was given a special wristband with the I Count message, We can stop climate chaos.
Recognition and guidance
At present these programmes are rather ad hoc: some festivals make a clear public statement, while others are less upfront with statements that recognise their impact or what they are doing to reduce it. The Greener Festival website represents a more co-ordinated approach. The Greener Festival team has established a voluntary award scheme to acknowledge individual festival's commitment to environmentally friendly practices (EFPs).
The award A GREENER FESTIVAL 2007 will be based around the twin aims of promoting greener practices and promoting sustainability. It will be available to any festival which can meet the requirements of a 60-question check list and commit to an AZ of green priorities. The award is particularly aimed at promoting greener practices at music festivals. The website also contains a wide range of helpful information on issues such as traffic congestion and travel, CO2 emissions, making better use of water and reducing pollution from noise. These provide a good reference for any festival seeking to develop its understanding of its environmental impact and how to reduce it.
Green audiences
There is also evidence from the Greener Festivals own research that festival-goers have concern for the natural environment, and a majority expect that endeavours for its protection should be pursued. Seventy-four per cent agreed or strongly agreed that all festivals should implement EFPs. Ninety-one per cent think that organisers should be responsible for minimising any damaging effects that a festival may have. Amongst festival organisers there is understandably a concern that responding to this pressure can affect them financially and may end up re-directing funds away from their artists. Are EFPs more of a draw than a major name? At the moment few festival-goers indicate they are selecting their choice of festival on the basis of its EFPs. The more persuasive factors for implementing EFPs are likely to be legislative, financial incentives, support from a local council and more information regarding the issues and solutions.
Lurking behind all this are the twin issues of carbon footprint and carbon offset. Important as the aforementioned schemes are, the greater impact on the environment may come predominantly from the consequences of personal travel. The emphasis is on may because the evidence has not yet been obtained with which to be more emphatic. Calculating ones personal carbon footprint is now something that all households can do see the Directgov website for a simple way of doing this but doing so for a festival is a different matter.
Best practice
To their credit some festivals are attempting to do so, such as the Futuresonic Festival in Manchester. Its website carries information on Environment 2.0, its programme of lectures and related research aimed at identifying the festivals carbon footprint and ethical ways of offsetting the impact. As the festival states, this has to be more than through throwing a bit of money at a carbon offset provider& Mitigating climate change is a difficult social and political task. They encourage donations to organisations involved in environmental work such as Atmosfair (http://www.atmosfair.de) whose website provides information on the carbon emissions of air travel.
The other side to this calculation is that festival-goers once they are at the festival are not creating carbon emissions at the same level as they might at home. So arriving at a fair measure of a festivals environmental impact requires time and data that few festivals have the resources for.
Addressing this may be part of the discussion at the BAFA conference. No one has a monopoply on good practice so there is great scope for innovative responses to what is clearly a major challenge global warming. Many festival organisers, whilst unsure about how to deal with the problem, do recognise that their festivals provide a great way to promote the importance of sustainable development and working with festival-goers in doing something about it.
Christopher Maughan is Principal Lecturer in Arts Management at De Montfort University. He is active in research on festivals and currently co-ordinator for the European Festivals Research Project. The BAFA conference will take place from 11 to 13 October in Buxton. For more details, see http://www.artsfestivals.co.uk.