Young people and greenhouse gas emissions at music festivals

ABSTRACT

The findings of “Face your elephant,” a peer led youth engagement project, are presented. It has been operating for over 10 years and has engaged with over 10,000 festival-goers at 15 festivals, trained over 100 peer educators in science communication and public engagement skills and helped to change power supply practices of festival organizers in the United Kingdom. This long-term approach has delivered multiple benefits in terms of raising festival-goers awareness of actions needed to address climate change, empowering young volunteers as peer educators and informing festival organizers about the opportunities for greenhouse gas emission reductions.

Acknowledgments

Aggreko: Jono Rose and Bill Eagan. Centre for Alternative Technology: Deirdre Raffan, Peter Harper and Kit Jones. Festival Republic: Laura Pando and Melvin Benn. Firefly: Andy Mead and Richard Randall. Julies Bicycle: Alison Tickell and Chiara Badiali. Leicester City Council: festival staff. Midas: Andy Dann and Dave Noble. Off Grid Energy: Danny Jones, Janene Dooler and Joe Bolton. Woodcraft Folk: Bob Todd. Finally, we acknowledge all the many volunteers over the years.

Notes

1 The benchmark is based on data from 13 festivals. All except one were under 20,000 attendances in size. The benchmark excludes audience transport but includes diesel use for generators, landfilled waste and emissions related to water supply and sewerage.

2 One audience day is equal to one person visiting the festival for one day. For example, one person attending a festival for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday = three audience days.

3 This detail on electricity related emission can instead be found in “Electricity-related GHG emissions at off-grid, outdoor events” (Fleming, Marchini, & Maughan, 2014).

4 Festival organizers involved are as follows: Festival Republic (Latitude), Leicester City Council (Big Session and Summer Sundae) and Kambe Events (Shambala).

5 Videos of these individuals and the project in general can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/user4385100

6 More information about the Powerful Thinking Campaign and further reports can be found here: http://www.powerful-thinking.org.uk/

Additional information

Funding

EPSRC, DEFRA Climate Challenge Fund, and the Royal Academy of Engineering all helped in part funding this work.