SUSTAINABILITY
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PROJECTS AND PARTNERSHIPS Appropriately enough, LIVE ’s interview with Hazlewood takes place during the first week of the COP28 climate change convention in the UAE, where Julie’s Bicycle was among more than 1000 cultural organisations to contribute to a global call to action to urge climate negotiators to embed culture into climate policy, ensuring that ‘culture- based solutions to climate change are recognised and implemented’. One of the primary mechanisms that Julie’s Bicycle has for doing this is its International Touring Environmental Responsibility programme, led by Hazlewood. Now in its third year, the programme supports artists and organisations to develop sustainable approaches to touring, with an emphasis on forming international collaborations that strengthen connections between the participating countries. With Arts Council England, Danish Arts Foundation and Arts Council Norway as partners, the initiative encompasses online seminars and mentoring sessions that explore the solutions to challenges facing the sector in terms of sustainability. “At the end of the programme, participants form collaborations between countries and put forward project proposals related to different aspects of touring,” says Hazlewood, who cites projects that have variously focused on areas including ‘deep community engagement’ by artists that want to work closely with the environments they appear in, and ‘slow touring’ via train. The thorny problem of travel – both by touring productions and their audiences – is inevitably a priority for many projects. Among the tools offered by Julie’s Bicycle are bespoke online carbon calculators that help different types and sizes of organisations calculate the impact of their tours. “As a general rule, travel is the aspect that has the biggest impact, and the calculations regularly show that if you travel by train or over land, you’ll automatically see a huge different artistic disciplines means that Hazlewood is well-placed to observe that ‘different sectors have sometimes taken quite different actions’. That said, smaller productions and organisations have often proven more agile and responsive to change than larger ones, suggesting global touring could be the last to reach its sustainability potential. Despite profound challenges, there is reason for optimism. The financial crash and pandemic meant “there was a bit of a drop in momentum, but interest has really grown again in the last few years, and there are a lot of innovative projects happening at the moment,” according to Hazlewood. ARTIST-LED INITIATIVES Intriguingly, some of the most exciting projects at the moment are actually being spearheaded by the artists reduction compared to a plane.” The organisation’s work across themselves. Having sworn off touring for a while until it could be made more
sustainable, Coldplay’s latest Music of the Spheres World Tour has so far produced 47% less CO2e emissions than its previous tour between 2016 and 17, while 66% of all tour waste has been diverted from landfills, according to an update reported in June 2023. In October, The 1975 announced that its 2024 performances at the London O2 would be the venue’s first-ever ‘carbon-removed’ shows, with organiser AEG Europe saying that it had calculated how much carbon would be produced by staging, catering and band travel – along with an estimate of the emissions created by audience travel. The contribution to environmental impact made by crowd transportation is also the target of a one-day festival recently announced by Massive Attack. The Bristol-based group has announced that its 25 August 2024 event at Clifton Downs will be 100% powered by renewables. In addition to giving local fans priority for tickets, organisers will encourage train travel and lay on free electric buses to Bristol Temple Meads station. Food vendors will have to use locally sourced produce, and a ‘climate- resilient woodland plantation’ will take place subsequently. The impressively holistic approach adopted by Massive Attack is in keeping with the history of the band, who have now been arguing for a more urgent approach to climate change for many years. However, they are by no means the only act with a long track record of translating ideas into actions, as Chris Spinato, manager of communications at Reverb – a US-based organisation that promotes a ‘turnkey, custom, scalable’ approach to sustainable touring and fan engagement – can attest. “There are veteran artists like Dave Matthews Band and Jack Johnson who have been doing this for decades and working really hard [on the issue],” he remarks. “Then there are newer artists coming up, so cross-generationally there are plenty of performers who really care and recognise that they have a platform to make a difference. [More recently], I think that collectively they’ve started to realise that, too.” Perhaps the most influential of the younger artists is Billie Eilish, who has partnered with Reverb on the subject of tour sustainability since 2019. For her most recent tour, Happier Than Ever in 2022, Reverb worked ‘from conception through execution’ with Eilish and her team, as well as partners such as promoter Live Nation, plant-based food initiative Support and Feed, as well as marketing and management company Wasserman. A commendable list of statistics featured in the tour’s impact report includes the elimination of 117,000 single-use plastic bottles, neutralisation of 15,000+ tonnes of CO2e via certified climate projects, and saving of 8.8 million gallons of water through the serving of plant-based meals to artists and crew. “Billie Eilish has been a wonderful partner,” says Spinato. “She’s sincere in taking action on sustainability, and
Reaction Sound System, supported by Julie’s Bicycle (top); KV2 deployed at Electric Bay UK (above)
Coldplay’s latest Music of the Spheres World Tour has so far produced 47% less CO2e emissions than its previous tour in 2016-17”
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