Insight Interview Series No. 4

This week it's the turn of the delightful James Drury, General Manager of the Festival Awards to share all things camping with us. Festival Awards have really got behind the Love Your Tent campaign and have been fully supporting us through social media and their website.

Thanks Guys!

1. Do you love your tent and what is it?

Yes! I’ve had the same black two-man tent for 5 years now. It’s a bit worse for wear but I wouldn’t camp at a festival without it. It’s kept some of the worst of the British weather off me.

2. Where is your favourite camping spot and why?

Anywhere which is close enough to the action to not have to walk too long, but far enough away to be able to get some sleep

3. What festivals are we most likely to spot you at over the summer?

I’ll be at The Great Escape, Kendal Calling, V Festival, and possibly some others...

4. Would it surprise you to know that 1 in 5 people leave their tent behind after each festival?

Yes. It always surprises me that people leave their tents at a festival, and walking through the site on the morning after the festival has ended I think it’s sad to see so many abandoned. But I never knew it was such a large proportion of people. 

5. Why do you think people leave their tent and camping equipment?

It seems to me that it’s a combination of laziness and the fact that tents are so cheap that it doesn’t seem a big waste of money to leave it behind. 

6. What’s your funniest camping story?

I once spent an hour trying to find my tent only to realise I was in the wrong camping area.

7. What are your top three tracks to listen to around the campfire?

Someone’s Second Kiss by RJD2

The First Time Ever I saw Your Face by Joanna Law 
To Build A Home by The Cinematic Orchestra

8. Any top camping tips?

Take earplugs - essential for getting some sleep at a festival

9. Knowing the festival scene as you do has the problem of abandoned tents been a recent phenomenon or has it always happened?

It seems to me that it's got significantly worse in the last few years. I think that’s mainly down to the fact that it’s cheaper to get a tent now.

10. Do some festivals suffer more than others with campfield waste? 

I’m not sure - the larger festivals, by the very fact that they are larger, must have more to clean up - but I don’t know if some have more of a problem than others.

11. What do you think can be done to change people’s behaviour and to value their possessions and the environment more?

Festivals are a great forum for education - there’s already a great amount of work which is done around environmental and charity programmes, so this power could be used to help people understand the environmental damage done by leaving tents on site. Some people mistakenly think that if they leave their tent it will be collected and given to charity, but they have to go in landfill, which damages the environment. It’s important that they realise this. It would also help if tents weren’t so cheap.

12. Is there anything festivals can be doing more of to make it easy for punters to take everything home with them?

More education, through schemes such as Love Your Tent is really important, which is why we at Festival Awards are getting behind the campaign.

13. What do you think of the first cross-festival waste campaign aimed at campers, Love Your Tent?

I think it’s a great idea. The more people understand the damage that leaving a tent behind does, the better for all of us.

James Drury is General Manager of Festival Awards Ltd, producers of the UK Festival Awards, UK Festival Conference and the European Festival Awards. The awards events and conference bring together the festival industry to share information and celebrate the achievements of the world’s foremost festival industries. In 2012 over a million votes were cast for the awards, with fans making their feelings known about more than 700 festivals.

Love Your Tent launches online audience survey

Love Your Tent, the first cross festival waste campaign aimed at campers, wants to know why? Why has leaving tents, camping equipment and general rubbish become such an endemic part of festival culture that it sees 1 in 5 people (Source AGF, 2012) abandon everything at the festival site on a Monday morning, in favour of spending a short time taking their tents down and packing everything up, so they can reuse next time?

The Love Your Tent online survey in association with A Greener Festival and Buckinghamshire New University is now live and the LYT team want as many festival goers to fill it in throughout the 2013 festival season in an attempt to fully understand audience behaviour, so the problem can be tackled through education and collective action.

“We bought our tent for a tenner down the local supermarket so I’m not really bothered about it, I can always buy another one next year”

 “We’ve partied a bit too much and don’t have the energy to take it down and carry it home”

“I’m actually doing some good because they get sent to overseas charities for emergency shelter, don’t they?”

“These are some of the responses we got last year when we asked people at one of the major festivals why they were leaving their tents behind. These answers were pretty typical but we know it doesn’t have to be like that, festival’s such as Wychwood and Shambala have proved it’s possible for audiences to take everything home with them after a weekend of partying so together we need to appeal to as many festival goers as possible to do the same. The survey is an opportunity for us to see if there are more behavioural connections that are revealed on a wider scale such as is it more typical for younger audiences to leave everything? Is there a gender sway towards disrespectful behaviour? Is it a combination of factors that contribute to people to choosing to leave everything or is there one dominant reason? These answers will allow us to tailor the focus of the Love Your Tent campaign for next year so we can start to make some headway in limiting camp field waste in the future.” says Juliet Ross-Kelly of Eco Action Partnership who launched the Love Your Tent campaign in 2012.

Love Your Tent is a rapidly growing movement spearheaded by Eco Action Partnership Ltd, with the cooperation of A Greener Festival, the Association of Independent Festivals  and Sounds for Nature (Germany), with the aim of reducing camping waste and landfill at Festivals around the world, through collective social pressure and consciousness. 

“Assessing festivals around the world who take great efforts to minimise their environmental impact, one of the saddest things to see is a waste land of abandoned items from the audience. Unfortunately tents and camping equipment seem to have become disposable items in the minds of many. We fully support the Love Your Tent campaign in the hope that more will realise this sad wastefulness that desperately needs to be addressed.” comments Co-Founder of A Greener Festival, Claire O’Neill

Last year the Love Your Tent campaign was nominated for a ‘Green Innovations Award’ at the annual festival awards and has since gone from strength to strength with many festivals pledging to support the campaign by helping to build awareness throughout 2013 including Wychwood, Truck, Shambala, Glastonbury, Reading, Leeds, Isle of Wight, Body & Soul, Y Not and Brownstock and with more big names to be announced soon.

The audience survey will be followed up with a festival organisers survey later in the year.

To answer the survey, follow this link

To join the movement and pledge your support, go to www.facebook.com/LoveYourTent

For more information visit www.loveyourtent.com

Here’s to a sunny, litter free 2013 festival season!

Insight Interview Series No.3

The lovely Jen Howard Coles, Sustainability Co-ordinator, from Shambala Festival is the third interviewee in our Insight Series.

Pioneering, intimate and truly innovative, Shambala Festival is an award-winning green event in a secret location in Northamptonshire every August Bank Holiday weekend. It beautifully blends music, creativity, theatrics and spectacle and has become one of the most anticipated festivals in the festival calendar.

Thanks Jen for giving us an insight into your camping past and present!

1.     Do you own a tent and if so how long have you had it?

I do have an old, much loved one but I must confess to being a van-dweller mostly these days.

2.    Where is your favourite camping spot and why?

Ooo that’s a tricky one. I love the Gower because it’s so easy to get to and so beautiful with amazing beaches. And when I lived in Edinburgh my favourite spot to camp out was another beach called Tynninghame, between North Berwick and Dunbar. Wild and empty beaches with sheltered folds in the cliff for sleeping out, or up above beautiful tent spots in the low, dry, mossy woodland.

3.    Apart from Shambhala are there any festivals you look forward to over the summer?

Knockengorroch in Dumfries and Galloway, usually the 3^rd weekend of May.  I haven’t missed one for more than 8 years. Scotland’s best kept secret.

4.   Why do you think the UK embraces outdoor festivals and as a result has an enviable leading festival scene?

Optimistically because we are culturally and creatively diverse and forward-thinking. Pessimistically because we are desperate to escape the rat-race in these densely populated islands!

5.   Does Shambala have a problem with discarded tents and camping equipment?

Not a big problem really. We get a few.

6.   From a festival that doesn’t have a problem with abandoned tents does it surprise you that 1 in 5 people leave their tent behind after each festival and most of them end up in landfill?

It’s something I’ve looked at quite a lot and considered, but yes, 1 in 5 is shocking.

7.   Why do you think people leave their tent and camping equipment behind?

They are tired and feeling lazy. It might be dirty and they can’t face cleaning it up when they get home. They bought it cheap and they don’t care about it much. It’s slightly broken sometimes maybe?

8.   What makes the Shambala audience so keen to pack everything up at the end of a long weekend of partying and yet other audiences feel as if it is someone else’s responsibility to clean up after them?

We attract a lot of responsible people who care about the environment. It’s a lovely site and we all want to keep it that way. We have a great waste management team who make sure that bins don’t overflow and litter is kept to a minimum, so I think people realise if they leave a mess it really shows. 

9.   What do you think can be done to change people’s behaviour and to value their possessions and the environment more?

Very difficult question. No one approach will work on everyone. Education, encouragement and making it really easy and intuitive are key. Less cheap crappy tents in supermarkets!! Tent mending service on site.

10.   Do you have a funny camping story?

Yes but I can’t think of an appropriate one! Camping is almost always hilarious.

11.   What are your top three tracks to listen to around the campfire?

They’d all be reggae songs.

12.   Any top camping tips?

Wellies. Tupperware. But most of all a sheepskin rollmat. Mine’s chocolate brown, 6 ft long, Hebridean and fits in a stuffbag.

13.    In your experience is there anything festivals can be doing more of to make it easy for punters to take everything home with them?

Trolley lending, cycle couriers, make sure fire lanes and gaps in tent rows are maintained for easy exit, smaller carparks/pick up points nearer to individual camping areas. Also, people bring less stuff when they travel on public transport.

14.   What do you think of the first cross-festival waste campaign aimed at campers, Love Your Tent?

I like it!

Shambala Festival is on from 22nd-25th August and you can buy your tickets here