Studying Sustainable Festival Management as a Degree Subject
8th October 2024
The BA(Hons) Sustainable Festival Management is an innovative collaboration between Falmouth University and the world-renowned Eden Project in Cornwall. The course seeks to demonstrate how responsible management practices can be applied across the industry: in the full range of functions and activities that relate to festival management. We spoke to course leader Paul Russell to learn more about how the course aims to shape a more sustainable future.
The Course
As the title indicates, sustainable practice is a key focus of the course, which aims to develop the specialist knowledge, skills and attributes required for graduates to affect positive change in the industry. One of the important distinctions that the course makes is that sustainability should not be viewed as a niche area of interest – rather it is an absolutely integral theme running throughout everything that we do, and the ultimate ambition of the course is to shape a more sustainable future.
Students are able to design, develop and deliver a number of live experiences over the three years of the course, starting with a collection of student-orientated events within the University’s purpose-built performance centre.
The partnership with Eden Project means that students can spend time applying their learning in a unique live environment – Eden Project is home to the Eden Sessions: a series of outdoor music concerts. Students ultimately progress on to manage a live experience at the Eden Project itself, and this practical approach means that students are responding to the same real-world considerations that face festival professionals in their daily lives.
The Challenges of Teaching Sustainability
Delivering sustainability-related content is not about presenting simplistic ‘easy truths’, and the course team recognise that sustainable practice is a complex, multifaceted concept that does not necessarily present straightforward solutions. That is why the development of critical thinking capacity is absolutely crucial for the contemporary festival professional. The course encourages students to take a questioning approach and to evaluate data so that we can make evidence-based decisions.
The team at Falmouth University also recognise that sustainable practice is about attitudes and developing proactive approaches – sustainability is a moving target and as our understanding increases, as technologies change, and as social expectations shift, we continually make advances. One way of looking at this is with the mindset that ‘being sustainable’ is not necessarily an end destination – it is a journey.
Another important feature of the course is the importance of understanding the broader contexts of sustainability. Whilst being able to assess and manage environmental impacts and natural resources is a crucial aspect of the course, it is also important to look beyond purely ecological considerations to include social, cultural and economic sustainability. Importantly, within the course, students are able to further their understanding of the importance of accessibility and inclusivity when designing high-quality festival experiences.
Student Perspectives
The ability to study sustainability within a festival context has proved to be a key motivator for students enrolling on the course. First year student Ria Jenks, provides an interesting insight into her reasons for choosing Falmouth University.
“I love festivals and how diverse they can be in terms of what they are based on, and I have always attended them since I was little, so I knew that this course was perfect for me. I also love the focus on Sustainability we have here at Falmouth University and in this course as a whole. I think it will be super exciting to work with the Eden Project over the course of the next three years too.”
Graduates of the course have gone on to work in a wide range of festival and event-related careers including event logistics, marketing, crew management, security management, and sustainability consultancy, as well as developing freelance portfolios.
Top Tips for Small Festivals and Concerts
There are lots of positive actions that can be taken by all festivals and concerts whether large or small, and a crucial step in achieving ongoing positive outcomes is to develop clear objectives – the performance of which can be measured. Within the course, students are encouraged to really consider ways in which to articulate targets; this means that we are focusing on the end result and how to achieve that result in the most effective way.
One of the other key benefits of this approach is that impacts, and the use of resources, can be tracked over time, and the festival management team can understand and correlate how their actions are contributing to an enhancement in terms of the sustainability of the event. A good example of this approach relates to setting targets around the quantity of distinct types of waste generated. The data that is collected may also be useful in identifying not only the environmental but also the financial implications of any proposed initiatives.
Find out more about the Sustainable Festival Management course here.
Don’t forget to visit the This Is Not A Rehearsal webpage to explore more news, training & events, resources and research to support you on your sustainability journey. If you’d like to stay up to date with training and resources related to the climate crisis within the music education sector, click here to sign up for our ‘This Is Not A Rehearsal’ monthly newsletter.
