The Green Gathering won the A Greener Future ‘Green Festival Award’ at the 2024 UK Festival Awards (UKFA) and it’s not the first time they have been awarded this honour… they have now received this prestigious title four times! Clearly they are putting the work in to put the Green in Green Gathering. We asked Em Weirdigan to share her insights into how they continue to improve on the sustainability practices and strategy that once again saw the festival rise the top of the list to scoop the prize.

“The Green Gathering is the original off grid festival, proudly solar powered since its inception in the 1990s. Describing the event as ‘a festival beyond hedonism powered by sun, wind, people and passion’, a key challenge for Green Gathering organisers is how to keep improving? How to stay ahead, having won UK and International awards for being ‘Greenest’ multiple times in recent years? And how to do this on a small budget, with no sponsors, when so many grassroots festivals are struggling to survive financially?

Believing that being Green goes beyond measuring carbon emissions, the festival’s directors decided to keep plugging away at the classic issues such as travel and waste, while also focusing on the possibilities of community resilience, adaptation to climate change, diversity and inclusion – broad societal issues which are increasingly urgent to address.

Carbon emissions

The diesel buggy we use as a ‘request bus’ for Assisted Access customers was swapped for an electric buggy, which we charged from solar.

Having invested in reusable bar cups for well over a decade, in 2024 we invested in enamel mugs which we lent out (or sold at cost price) from three locations around the festival site, to significantly reduce the waste associated with single-use hot beverage cups.

Charges for car parking were increased, with ongoing incentives and tips for those travelling on public transport – free programmes, discounted tent hire and a Green Traveller Guide.

Social justice themes

Who attends our festival, who performs, who feels welcome? How do we make the fabulous, life-enhancing, educational experience we provide accessible to more people?

For years we’ve had a Women’s Tent and a Queer Space – supportive, exclusive, well used and much appreciated safe spaces.  After a report of racism at our 2023 festival we were made aware that we should consider having an exclusive space for people of colour. Yes, even at an event which so many of our festival-goers regard as safe, friendly, ‘fluffy’… even at Green Gathering, people who are racialised as not-white can feel unwelcome, out of place, and afraid. So, we teamed up with the fabulously dedicated Crows Nest team, who created a sacred space exclusively run by and for people of colour. It was welcome.

We signed up to the Keychange Pledge a few years ago, and thanks to our wonderful Entertainments Cooordinator, Ellie Ulyatt, we quickly hit our target, with over 50% of Green Gathering’s musical performers being of under-represented genders in 2023. So we pushed on in 2024, with spoken word venues signing up to the Keychange Pledge too. Meanwhile we worked to go beyond gender, in line with Keychange’s expanded mission to to look more deeply at broader diversity and intersectionality.

Our Assisted Access area expanded again in 2024, and we continued in our attempts to make as many experiences as possible accessible. To this end we introduced a wheelchair accessible sauna, and additional accessible compost toilets. Another first was recruitment of a dedicated person at Box Office specifically to assist customers with access needs.

Transformative Adaptation

We put additional effort into our ‘TrAd Village’ in 2024 because, frankly, we are now at a stage where climate adaptation and building community resilience are essential. We need to work with nature rather than against her, we need to connect with the land and each other, we need to grieve and adapt, mitigate and hope, and shape the future into something kinder. When we promote our festival, we increasingly frequently promote these ideas at the same time. Story telling is vital.

Change Making

At the 2024 Green Events and Innovations conference, Green Gathering directors presented research undertaken with A Greener Future, which shows that attendance at a Green Gathering has an impact far beyond the festival. Over a third of our festival community has been inspired to change behaviour in terms of what they eat, buy and waste, and 20% say the festival has influenced them to become more engaged in community activities and climate change activism.

By talking about and sharing this research, we hope to inspire other events to consider how they too can make change that lasts far longer than a weekend.

More info

• Green Traveller Guide www.greengathering.org.uk/the-green-traveller-guide
• The Crows Nest www.greengathering.org.uk/blog/the-crows-nest—new-for-2024
• Rolling out the Keychange Pledge www.greengathering.org.uk/blog/voices-of-gaia-makes-keystone-pledge
• Assisted Access at Green Gathering  www.greengathering.org.uk/assisted-access
• Transformative Adaptation www.greengathering.org.uk/transformative-adaptation
• Impact research: www.greengathering.org.uk/blog/new-research-reveals-ggs-positive-impact
• Resources for event organisers www.greengathering.org.uk/resources
• How Green? www.greengathering.org.uk/how-green

This article originally appeared in our January 2025 Vision for Sustainable Events newsletter. Sign up to receive monthly event sustainability news, case studies and guest blogs direct to your inbox.