CEMUS@European Sustainable Urban Street Festivals
Sakip Murat Yalcin reporting:
It’s been freezing in Berlin. A humid -5 of Berlin is much worse than a dry -20 of Uppsala. But we survive.
Different street festivals around Europe wanted to meet up to discuss, exchange ideas and hopefully come up with solutions on how to make their events more sustainable.
What is meant is events that have the bigger part of their activities in streets: such as parades, outdoor concerts, workshops and so forth.
An event that takes sustainability measures during its organizational process, during and after its event. In short, an event that thinks sustainable.
One thing that strikes me in this conference is that there were no hints of greenwashing attempts. All the events that attended the conference were eager and sincere about making their events more sustainable.
In a nice mixture of event organizers, municipality officials, sustainable management consult companies, students on sustainability issues and even a representative from the Berlin Police we have discussed the ways to make cultural events more sustainable.
The first thing I noticed was how different problems came up from different events. The difficulties on security issues, the total number of visitors, health issues, waste and infrastructure varies really a lot depending on the event. Of course, it is this variety that makes the conference more fruitful, since it creates a better platform to exchange ideas.
The most discussed topic in all of the parallel workshops was the waste problem. Apparently all the events felt the necessity to do something about it, and of course they are all eager to implement measures that are environmentally friendly. This includes recycling, introduction of reusable materials, being energy efficient and so on. (Watching the event organizers come up with solution ideas and/or experiences was very much like watching the CEMUS students do a workshop task, which made me proud and put a smile on my face.)
One of the ideas I had before the conference was to stress upon the responsibility of the cultural events in being examples and pioneers in, among others, sustainable thinking. I have stressed this in different occasions and it has been taken with a positive reaction. Yet, it seems like the participating events feel the necessity of taking the practical measures first, for example in recycling, (I read: be the change themselves first) and then maybe consider trying to make direct effect on the visitors of the event.
This was compared to the contribution of the carnivals around Europe in promotion of multi-culturalism. The carnivals host local culture groups, be it minorities or subcultures yet they didn’t take any political or ethical standpoint to prove anything to anyone when they started their events. Similarly, these street festivals can also start taking sustainability measures that would in the later years be catalyzed into a bigger effect.
I’ve been sitting side by side with Magnus Lindén of Uppsala’s Kulturernas Karneval and Sofie Blomgren of Uppsala’s Kulturnatten during the conference. The point above differs a little bit in the case of these events. Compared to the events in other cities, we felt like we’ve already come a good way in sustainability issues. Uppsala’s events have remarkably less problems when it comes to recycling, waste management and reusable materials. This of course depends on the country’s relatively better measures on the topic. (By the way, all the participants got shocked when we said that our events were non-alcoholic. It then even showed that alcohol consumption was causing the biggest part of the problems the other events had: from security to waste management.)
“Implementing Sustainability at Your Events : ISO 20121 Standard”
ISO 20121 is not the only guideline (and certificate) to make a sustainable event. More info can be found on for example:
www.positiveimpact.co.uk,
mpi.sustainableeventtool.com,
http://www.eibtm.com/files/how_to_implement_bs_8901.pdf.
http://sustainable-event-alliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Sustainable-Event-Management-Vol-22-IS-11.pdf
The participants are hoping to create a network to be able to continue the cooperation that started during the conference. They have even agreed on making a list of the most important topics to take care of and to share ideas on solutions.
Uppsala Kommun and Kulturernas Karneval have expressed their desire to host the next conference in Uppsala. I believe that is something that CEMUS should be part of and help organize. Magnus, Sofie and I discussed about a possible set up: the first idea was that the definition of sustainability must be widened and not limited on material problems, even if those are the ones that the events are suffering directly from.
Kulturernas Karneval is eager to create some sort of cooperation to make the event even more sustainable. The first thing that popped up in my head was a CEMUS course having a student group to “certificate” the carnival’s sustainability, maybe as a course project.
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