The Isle of Wight Festival is always a special place for us, it's where we worked as sustainability consultants for six years, winning a host of awards and it is where Love Your Tent was born. During our time working with the festival we were shocked at more and more tents, camping equipment and general rubbish being left on the Monday morning and knowing because of recycling facilities and the festival organisers time constraints at having to return the site to normal use as quickly as possible, nearly all of this abandoned waste was going straight to landfill. We had in our six years working with the festival tried to communicate to the audience that this wasn't acceptable but nothing seemed to be working and we knew most other festivals not only in the UK but worldwide were in the same position, so we figured the only way to tackle this now endemic problem was with one voice and one message that was repeated across festival culture and that's when Love Your Tent became our mantra.
After a soft launch of Love Your Tent at Isle of Wight Festival in 2012, where we ran our own Love Your Tent camping field called RESPECT, the campaign has gone from strength to strength. We now have a worldwide partner focusing on recruiting European and global festivals and since the amazing support from Isle of WIght Festival many other UK festivals have signed up to the campaign and have pledged to reach out to their audiences and spread the Love Your Tent and Take it Home message.
So we were excited to be back at the Isle of Wight Festival this year to catch up with all the lovely people working on it and to again run the RESPECT campfield where the 1200 occupants had signed up to our Tent Commandments pledging to take everything home with them and to be respectful to everyone else in the field. We're really glad to say that once again this field had such an amazing relaxed community vibe where everyone looked out for each other and just as importantly kept it clean all weekend, so there was no fighting with piles of rubbish to get back to your tent coming back from the main arena. The vibe was also helped by some extra facilities we organised for Respecters over the weekend such as kinetic mobile phone charging units using pedal power and tent stencilling, or body stencilling if you're our new pin-up, Dave.
Feedback from Respecters was amazing this year "This is by far the best camping experience I have had at the festival. I will be at the front of the queue for my pass next year. Thank you very much. How every field should look" Mark Grimes told us. "The whole festival needs to be like this rather than wading through beer cans and rubbish! Love Your Tent rocks!" says Andy Emery and Sue O'Brien said "All fields should be left like this! Will be back next year! Thank you Love Your Tent for helping make a brilliant weekend, spectacular". It's great to get such great feedback as it proves that a significant percentage of festival audiences want the camping experience to change and are prepared to do their bit to change it. With a little bit of collective thinking and action we can change the way people behave at festivals.
We are pleased to say that whilst the waste contractor at the Isle of Wight Festival waited for everyone to leave on Monday morning so they could come in and sweep up the abandoned rubbish and tents from general camping, by lunchtime the RESPECT field looked like this with only three tents left standing. One of which we will be reusing for a Love Your Tent office at other festivals and of the two left as they were badly damaged in the wind one we managed to donate to a new home (Ellie from our team says she can fix it!) and one we have broken down and recycled. Pretty amazing result.
We were also really encouraged by the support we received outside of RESPECT by artists and the audience. It made for an exciting weekend of spreading the Love Your Tent and Take It Home message. We met some amazing people.
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| Bastille |
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| Elizabeth McGovern |
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| Imagine Dragons |
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| John Giddings, Festival Promoter |
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| Kids in Glass Houses |
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| Laura Mvula |
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| Lawson |
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| Leeroy, The Prodigy |
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| Lianne Le Havas |
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| Respectful Gnomes |
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| Thanks Girls! |
So I guess what we are trying to say in a roundabout way is thank-you everyone at the Isle of Wight Festival for believing in and supporting Love Your Tent from the outset and setting an example for other festivals to follow.
Big Love Big Respect
x
PS The music was pretty amazing too x
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