Olivia PowellThe festival sustainability campaign Festival Vision 2025 recently hit the 100 member mark with the ‘From the Fields’ portfolio joining the festivals pledging to reduce their carbon footprint by 50% by 2025.
The Association of Independent Festival (AIF) community met in Sheffield for the 2019 AIF Congress to discuss issues ranging from festival economics to mental health.
Vision 2025 founder Chris Johnson participated in the panel ‘Garden of Eden: A Vision for A Sustainable Industry’. During the panel, he said: “It is time critical that we act now. It’s great to see more members of the festival community engaging to reduce their carbon impact, getting onboard Vision 2025 and seizing the moment to play their part in helping tackle the climate emergency.”
The From the Field portfolio includes Kendal Calling, Inner City Electronic and Bluedot, joining other Vision 2025 members; such as BBC Proms in the Park, Wireless, Festival Republic’s Download, Leeds and Reading, along with AIF members such as Hay Festival, Shambala, Kew The Music and Manchester Pride.
Director at From The Fields, Ben Robinson, said: “We have initiated many successful sustainable initiatives across our festivals in recent years and we recognise the spirit of collaboration to share and promote knowledge and best practice embodied by Vision 2025.”
The Vision 2025 campaign, run by Powerful Thinking, recently hosted its third annual conference at the Showman’s Show. Their most successful conference to date, it attracted over 150 event professionals.
Vision 2025 is currently writing the second edition of its Show Must Go on report, set to be published in Jan 2020. This will be a free to access event sustainability tool and online knowledge hub for outdoor event professionals looking to reduce their carbon impact.