Vision For Sustainable Events talk to Alexi Parkin, 4Wall’s Sustainability Officer & Touring Video Technician. Alexi guides 4Wall sustainability journey, spanning the company’s diverse clients across exhibitions, corporate events, concert touring, festivals, TV and film. Here he shares 4Walls latest energy efficient strategies and projects, showcased at Lido Festival 2025.
“I welcome the ‘Show Must Go On’ report as an important document to benchmark our progress.
With a specific focus on energy usage, this summer we are trialling new software to measure energy usage on our 72-way 400-amp distro units – giving us accurate energy usage and details for each act’s lighting and video energy draw.
We plan to provide festivals with accurate daily energy use in a step towards calculating actual energy requirements and supporting them with what they need to book. It’s well documented that most festivals over-compensate and have ‘oversized generator capacity’, which is both more expensive and less efficient. Knowledge of accurate data will therefore help save money.
Suppliers have some work to do to understand realistic energy usage predictions – not just taking manufacturers’ specs. We are tracking usage by monitoring the distros to know what the actual draw and peaks are. This should also encourage more meaningful conversations with our clients about sustainability.
On the subject of conversations, we encounter a variety of views about ‘what is fact’ and what things mean. To help, we are also about to announce Carbon Literacy training for all 4Wall employees, so that everyone is on board with the facts about climate change and to understand what we can do to reduce it.
In 2025, we took on more work than ever before and successfully managed the challenges of logistics, people, and equipment that growth brings. Some of the main festivals we supported included Glastonbury, Parklife, Lido Festival, All Points East, Green Man and Beat-Herder.
We also invested in energy-efficient equipment, predominantly ROE Visual & ABSEN screens.
LIDO Festival
We supplied exclusively LED fixtures for this project, The industry must continue moving away from power-hungry fixtures, as doing so will significantly reduce power consumption. LED screens are also evolving, becoming both lighter and brighter while using less power, which further supports sustainability goals.
I’m keen to develop a cross-industry working group of suppliers to discuss environmental impacts and encourage everyone to take a more unified commitment to sustainability. The rental model is inherently sustainable, as each piece of equipment is used to its fullest potential throughout its lifespan. There is an opportunity for both rental companies and manufacturers to measure their impact more effectively and identify ways to reduce it.
Manufacturers in China are currently ahead of Europe in adopting circular economy principles, further strengthening the sustainability of the rental model.”