Agenda item

Jess Magill and Zoey Cooper gave the Forum a presentation on the 2024 Exmouth Festival decarbonisation pilot.

The actions were to:

·        reduce travel carbon by booking local acts and infrastructure,

·        promote sustainable travel to the event,

·        programme acts and activities that reflected the ethos of the event,

·        reduce waste through use of reusable cups and no single-use plastics,

·        buy new bin toppers & recycled food,

·        bring in compost loos,

·        encourage traders to take action on carbon, waste reduction & plant-based foods.

The presentation outlined engagement before and during the festival, which included:

·        Pre-event participation.

·        Volunteers – Green Team!

·        Coordinated stalls and activities to engage people in the sustainability messages and opportunities.

·        Involving people in environmental themes in participatory performances.

·        Multiple activities around earth and marine science and protecting the natural world. Arts and crafts with recycled materials or messaging.

A sustainability message was incorporated through all press releases and PR so that it became a consistent thread in the event.  Communications included:

·        Customised graphics for sharing on social media, with general messages ‘tread lightly at Exmouth Festival’ and specific messages ‘travel green’, ‘bring a water bottle’.

·        The app and the website contained information on what was being done to make the festival greener and a section on what participants could do.

·        Press release to local media.

·        Newsletter emails used to communicate actions.

The approach to messaging was:

·        To work with traders in advance of the event to produce a checklist to display on their stall, detailing what carbon-reduction actions they are taking.

·        To work with artists to consider their travel footprint, record and send the data, and the chance to offset it.

·        To encourage both of these groups to share the results on their social media to amplify the message.

·        Put notices in each of the compost loos about why they were better for the environment.

·        Wrote announcements for the compere about actions and activities around sustainability.

Surveys were commissioned to gather data on audiences and what they experienced.  Travel, energy and waste data were recorded in a spreadsheet to calculate the event’s carbon footprint and as a way of monitoring improvement.  Feedback from the festival was that 42% of those asked said that they had experienced an ‘environment of sustainability’.  Overall travel footprint reduced from 14.7 to 13.1 tCO2.  Overall carbon footprint was reduced by 5% from 2023 to 2024.  During the 2024 festival car use went up and walking down, but seven times more people travelled by train.

The festival organisers outlined the toolkit during their presentation.  The toolkit was an excellent resource for event planning and contained:

·        Exmouth festival case-study.

·        Carbon calculator spreadsheet.

·        Sample survey.

·        Event planning document; pre, during and post event actions.

·        Templates for signage and bin toppers.

·        Examples of sustainability messaging.

·        Resources and links.

On behalf of the Forum the festival organisers were congratulated on a fantastic piece of work.  Their work on sustainability was inspirational and provided a good example of how data driven things needed to be.  It was critical to create awareness of decarbonisation and to be mindful of carbon footprints.