The greening of the music festival scene : an exploration of sustainable practices and their influence on youth culture

This chapter explores the ‘greening’ of the contemporary music festival scene by reviewing the environmentally sustainable practices engaged in by festival organizers and examining how this may influence young people. It is argued that contemporary music festivals play an important role as sites for raising public awareness and education of eco-political issues, especially for young people. Music festivals may serve as sites within which a global consciousness of environmental issues and global awareness are displayed and further developed among a trans-local youth audience. As part of local and global music scenes within which groups of like-minded people come together to celebrate, festivals allow young people to represent, understand and perform their identities simultaneously in a multitude of ways (Cummings 2006). Focusing on the literature surrounding the ‘greening’ of the contemporary music festival, the chapter argues that, as custodians of the planet’s future, young people will be active participants in ‘green governance’, whereby corporate business and industry increasingly seek to promote themselves as environmentally friendly. The music festival industry attempts to reconcile a business model with an approach to environmental sustainability. Drawing on examples of well-known American, British and Australian music festivals, the chapter examines the important role played by festival organizers in moving towards more sustainable festival practices. Festival organizers realize that despite the economic and social benefits of hosting festivals, considerable waste and other negative environmental impacts often result. The growing awareness of festivals as sites of waste and potential sites of addressing such issues provides the opportunity to remake or form communities beyond the constraints of locality and within the particular settings of the festival. Significantly, the chapter will address the contradiction between the ‘for profit’ nature of the contemporary music festival and the promotion of environmentally sustainable lifestyles in everyday life