In January 2022 Jessica Favarel, European project senior manager at Le LABA had the great opportunity to participate in BISE festival.
BISE festival is a showcase and conference festival for music events professionals. This event takes place in parallel with the Biennales Internationales du Spectacle BIS, a major event in live event where more than 14.000 visitors gather in Nantes for 2 days.
Future Festival Tools is European project funded by Erasmus + and aims to equip professionals in the event sector with concrete tools and training to be future-ready and reduce the ecologic impact of their festivals. The project partners, along with Le LABA (France) are NCASS (UK),Julies Bicycle (UK) , GO Group – Green Operations Europe (Germany), European E-learning Institute (Denmark),Momentum Marketing Services LTD (Ireland) and Green Events International B.V (Netherlands).
Over the last two years, experts in the field of eco-events, festivals, training, and European funding have come together to conceive and produce innovative resources.
The first of which is a self-assessment tool for festivals that enables them to know how they can improve on sustainability across Water, Energy, Food and Drinks, Waste, Transport and Strategy at their shows.
The tool is accessible online on the project website is easy and straight forward.
The self-assessment tool was born out of a need for festivals to understand their sustainability performance in a useful and straightforward way. There was recognition that there was a growing gap between the leaders in festival sustainability and the rest, so the tool is being seen as a way to close that gap by introducing everyone to key actions that can be taken.
In January, LABA held an interactive conference “Mobility and eco-responsibility in music” organised by La Coopération des pôles et réseaux régionaux de Musiques Actuelles where over 50 professionals participated and tested the tool. Festival organizers, bookers, producers, music trade union representatives and other professionals from the music sector attended and shared their own experiences on how to reduce the impact of travel on the environment. Free bikes, public transport at and sharing cars were discussed as be solutions, however, the question remains on how can we work together to encourage stakeholders such as train, electric car companies or policy makers to be part of this challenge.
The conference was also presented an opportunity to share some inspirational stories taken from another of the Future Festival Tools; the Green Festival Stories, a guide with different experiences of festivals on reducing their impact. Downloadable on the website in French and English, this resource is a good starting point for understanding the issues and the solutions others have put in place.
The two tools support each other, covering the 6 main project topics, water, travel. Food & drink, energy, materials & water and strategy and the recommendations provided along with the resources given provide a comprehensive resource for the industry. Future Festival Tools is an easy, free way for festivals of any size and level of sustainability to see where they are and what they can do next.
Want to know more about the Future Festival Tools resources or partners?
Contact us for further information at contact@lelaba.eu
