Looping Back: Designing Eco-Friendly Festivals

About the event

As the world rallies to tackle the ever-present climate crisis, the festival/events industry is also getting in line to make necessary changes. Answering various questions on climate-conscious events in a South Asian context, this session brought together festival/cultural professionals across four countries and 14 cities.

The panel featured Teresa Moore, Director of A Greener Festival, UK; Divya Ravichandran, Founder of Skrap; Illesha Khandelwal, Curator of Revival 2020; and Roshan Netalkar, Founder of Echoes of Earth. The session revolved around our understanding/perception of sustainability, ignorance and efficient planning and implementation.

Teresa answered the who, what, where and how of designing a truly sustainable festival. She emphasised data collection and analysis to identify and measure the impact of the event and take action accordingly. For the workshop task, the participants were asked to assess the impact of their events. This turned into a spirited discussion with participants putting forth their goals and measures to reduce this impact.

Divya, taking from her experiences at Skrap, put a spotlight on the importance of proper waste management infrastructure at events. She pointed out that awareness and involvement of key stakeholders in the entire process can help change their behaviour towards creating a climate-conscious event. Ending the session with an interactive exercise, Divya proposed a case study and asked the participants to come up with possible solutions. Each group presented innovative and easy-to-implement solutions. Next, Illesha and Rosha presented case studies on their respective eco-friendly festivals in India, namely, Revival 2020 and Echoes of Earth.

You can see some insightful tips by Divya Ravichandran and Teresa Moore on making festivals greener. For a deeper understanding on designing eco-friendly festivals, watch case studies on Echoes of Earth and Revival 2020.

This workshop was held as part of the British Council’s Festival Connections in partnership with Arts and Culture Resources India (an Art X Company initiative), an annual programme of expertise, knowledge and networking between India and the UK.