FEBRUARY | THE COLUMNISTS
Access’ 30 Under
30: Next Generation
columnists Simon
and Mehram talk
green issues, and
Essence’s director
is similarly ethically
minded...
Location, and responsibility
Essence Festival’s executive
director, live events & experiential,
Candace Montgomery How can a tour be
environmentally beneficial?
Kilimanjaro Live, event manager,
Simon Skelt Bang, and the dust is gone. Or
is it?
Mehram Sumray-Roots, founder,
YADA Events
This year is the anniversary of
Essence magazine, a legacy brand
that celebrates 50 years, with its
first festival in 1995.
The challenges putting on the
festival have been varied. When
Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans,
we moved our festival to Houston
as the city infrastructure was
simply not there. But we felt a
responsibility to bring the festival
back, for its economic impact and
jobs. The city needed that, and
they’re also our partner.
Now the festival has evolved
further, and we measure economic
impact, and a lot of people use us as
a benchmark. Competition creates
better performance, and we try and
deliver a top-notch experience.
We work closely with city and
state officials and carefully look
at the creative displays, and how
people will interact with ticketing,
registration, that sort of thing. As
soon as one festival is over, we work
a year ahead.
We were very much anchored in
music at the start, but it was also
always a ‘party with a purpose’. It’s
not just music, we try and make our
festival into an ecosystem to feed
back into the community. Towards the end of last year
Coldplay announced that they
would not be touring their latest
album, Everyday Life, until they find
a way to make touring sustainable
and actively beneficial. There’s
been a major shift in the mentality
towards the environmental impact
of the live events industry over the
past ten years and I wonder where
the next decade will take us.
Could it be that no suitable
solution is found and Coldplay
never tour again? I highly doubt it
but it is promising to see an artist
of their stature – their last tour
reportedly being the fifth highest
grossing of all time – laying down
the gauntlet to all those involved
in putting on large-scale events
to come up with solutions to the
global environmental problem
to ensure we can enjoy events
well into the distant future. As I
mentioned in my October column,
here at Kilimanjaro Live we’ve been
paying particular attention to our
environmental impact for the past
few years and will continue to do
so for all of our events from club
shows to stadiums and green fields
and hopefully in ten years’ time
we’ll be well in to producing events
and tours that are sustainable
and actively beneficial to the
environment. Climate concerns dramatically
increased in 2019, with Google
searches for ‘Climate Change’
hitting their highest ever level in
September. Many people predicted
that the top trend for 2020 will
be a significant move towards
sustainable events. However,
during the very first seconds of
the year, when midnight struck on
New Year’s Eve, any concern for the
climate was quickly forgotten.
Millions of pounds were spent
around the globe on firework
displays designed to uplift the
population, yet the impact of
fireworks on air pollution is rarely
discussed. London hosted it’s
“greatest display yet” and Sydney
spent the most on fireworks ($6.5m)
despite over 275,000 people signing
a petition for Sydney to cancel its
NYE fireworks display in solidarity
with the ongoing bushfires.
Like many, I believe fireworks
are magical and a symbol of global
celebration. However, small changes
could be made that could lower
both the environmental and health
risks associated with fireworks.
Paris had an incredible display of
light projectors and Berlin had no-
firework zones across the city. It is
no secret that the events industry
has a wasteful past – could 2020 be
the year we make a real change?
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