When I thought of sustainable events before, I would probably think about those local markets that sells organic or recycled sustainable goods. Just as the Bluestem Earth Festival, which features earth-friendly activities, workshops, live demonstrations, entertainment, local food and children's activities to the public. The Bluestem Earth Festival is an annual event, it provides the chance to promote eco-friendly products, educates the community on environmental friendly practices, and justice and peacemaking.
I personally think this kind of even is great. As it is fundamentally an entertainment, providing joy and fun to the public, at the same time promoting sustainable product to support the environment. As well as, it provides products that are organic and free from chemicals, which means consumers can have a better well being by using sustainable goods, or eating organic food. Sustainability as a topic becomes easily acceptable to the general public. As one of the vendors says, "It feels good to eliminate chemicals from people's lives and use products from the earth to take care of yourself." For me, the only negative thing on this event is it takes place annually. It is far away from enough. Yet for what I know, in Australia, there are more and more similar markets take place weekly for local residents, only in smaller scales. I guess they also need more support from institutions and the society to expand in scale.
This was the only thing I could think of when we say sustainable entertainment, until I came across to this interesting piece of news.
It is about an outdoor music festival - The Pickathon Music Festival, in which the concept of sustainability is the top priority. The stages, which is called treeline stage, are built from recycled or recyclable materials. Bottled water and plastic utensils are eliminated, as well as providing EcoShuttle service between the field and the grounds. The first step was thinking about how to eliminate bottled-water. Pickathon decided to truck in drinking water to those who bring their own cup for free. As well as, instead of plastic cups, the festival provided a special stainless steel pint mug, which can be used for water as well as beer purchase. The cups are therefore, being reused year after year, without creating extra waste.
To me the most extraordinary part was on the stage building. The stage named Tree-Line Stage was essentially a stage built with recycled or recyclable materials. It was designed based on the four principles:
- To continue Pickathon's philosophy of high-experimental impact coupled with low-environmental impact
- The site was to be returned to its found condition, an idyllic meadow leaning gently towards the horizon of the Cascades
- Costs to be kept to an absolute minimum
- The performance area needed to be a completely new design, every year, in order to keep the concepts of low-impact design at the front of the community's mind.
The video below tells one of the stories of Tree-line Stage:
The news shocked me so much, in a good way. When we think about outdoor music events, it is not hard to relate to the image that after the event there are waste everywhere on the ground, with the stage left at the place, looking absolutely nothing matches the natural environment around. In Pickathon, the idea on sustainability can be implied so well, that it entertains the society at the same time minimising its environmental impact. It is definitely a new way to promote sustainable entertainment. We definitely need to extend this idea further, to a larger scale, to the whole society. Of course, supportive governments and public is the key to make this sustainable entertainment idea vital.
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| Tree-line Stage at Pendarvis Farm |
Resources:
http://inhabitat.com/how-diversion-architecture-will-make-outdoor-concert-festivals-more-sustainable/
http://www.theherald-news.com/2016/05/21/bluestem-earth-festival-delivers-sustainable-chemical-free-products/abhq87q/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgsT2oNsYP4
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