Powerful Thinking

The Powerful Thinking campaign brings together festivals and suppliers to explore new ways of working which reduce costs and carbon through increased efficiency, and share findings to promote lower carbon energy supply.

It aims to drive a market for renewable energy supply at festivals, understanding and accounting for the business and cost restraints. It will support smaller renewable providers by raising their profile amongst promoters and suppliers that are using multiple power sources to strengthen their low carbon offer in a changing market place, and work with established suppliers and festivals to increase the efficiencies of existing relationships.

The campaign has been developed by the Green Festival Alliance, founded by A Greener Festival, Association of Independent Festivals, Bestival, Festival Republic, Firefly Solar, Julie’s Bicycle and Kambe Events.

Latest news

Julies Bicycle, DeMontfort University, the Environmental Change Institute (ECI, Oxford University), and Midas UK have teamed up through Powerful Thinking to offer festival organisers the opportunity to become involved with an important research project about energy-saving in the events sector. By being part of this project festivals can take advantage of significant discounts on cutting edge monitoring equipment, receive FREE expert advice on how to reduce energy costs and carbon emissions, and take part in a working group and free training event. It is a heavily subsidised opportunity, and you will contribute to wider understanding.

Please download the info pack HERE for full details

The Power Behind Festivals Guide

Launched in December 2012, 'The Power Behind Festivals' is a Guide to Sustainable Power at Outdoor Events.

Designed for promoters and festival organisers, the guide pools information gathered over the past 18 months by the Green Festival Alliance. It includes the findings from this summers Powerful Thinking research which surveyed a number of festivals and their approach to power.

The report aims to equip festival organisers with the knowledge, understanding, and basic tools they need to open and extend much needed conversations on delivering sustainable temporary power.

The report claims that any festival, regardless of size, location, or theme can save at least 10% on their energy bill by following the ideas within.

As with all our work, we are looking at how the learning’s from one sector, in this case festivals, can be transferred to other creative industries. We have already begun talking about this with the Green Theatre Network in relation to outdoor and site specific work.

The report is available to download here.

Why join?

As creative businesses in the public eye festivals can make a valuable contribution to the shifts needed to put society on a more sustainable path. We can reduce environmental impacts, innovate and promote good practice in our industry, and share ideas with our audiences. As businesses we also need to maintain profitability – managing resources more cleverly will be crucial in an increasingly volatile economic landscape.

Sharing knowledge and experiences as a festival community will benefit us all, and allow us to achieve our shared aims more quickly, and reduce environmental impacts more effectively. Join the ‘Powerful Thinkers’ of 2012!

Who's on board so far?

Festival Republic Logo Firefly Solar Logo Shambala Festival Logo Sunrise Celebration Logo Resource logo

How does it work?

Download the Powerful Behind Festivals Guide >
Tell us what you intend to do this year by emailing info@greenfestivalalliance.org.uk
Feed back your information after the event to info@greenfestivalalliance.org.uk

If you are willing to participate but your power supplier has no monitoring equipment, we may be able to help – get in touch.

All data will be anonymised by Julie’s Bicycle before being published as shared results – if you would like us to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement with you, we are happy to do so.

All participating organisation will be able to use the Powerful Thinking logo, and be included in industry press releases.

We will be back in contact with everyone participating this summer in early September to collect information which will be analysed and by presented by November 2012, hopefully in the UK Festival Market Report.

Stay in touch

What's the history?

In spring 2011 the inaugural Power Behind Festivals Symposium brought together festivals and power providers to discuss cross-industry experiences of and attitudes to renewable power supply. This event identified many shared issues, a commitment to finding sustainable solutions, and a need for more research and action that would accelerate change.

In Autumn 2011 Julie's Bicycle conducted research with Sussex University mapping the current uptake of renewable power across the UK festival sector. This research showed that reneable energy - solar powered battery, temporary wind or pedal power - is meeting just ~0.026% of festival power supply demand, and waste vegetable oil (WVO) biodiesel is currently meeting 3-6%.

READ A SUMMARY OF THE RESEARCH FINDINGS >

The Green Festival Alliance has formed to address these issues, aiming to increase awareness and knowledge about power, and encouraging and supporting innovation. It aims to stimulate solutions to increasing uptake of renewables across the festival and events industry, using the recommendations from this research and industry networks to drive change, and it's Power Behind Festival campaign will explore key issues, such as how power usage can start to be built into contractual agreements as part of a wider initiative to promote efficient configuration and planning. It aims to aggregate knowledge and information to assist both festival promoters and renewable power providers in understanding the state of the market, each others needs, and how better they can cohesively move towards establishing a nation-wide low carbon events industry.