Planning guides: festival.

Involving Attendees

  1. Feedback: Get Everyone Involved.

    Tell your attendees who your green contact is, and ask for their advice right from the beginning. Greening is a great way to build community, to weave your management team with the festival crowd's community.

  2. Contributions

    The fastest, easiest (and least interesting) way to involve attendees is to ask them to contribute cash, most commonly to carbon offsets. more »Carbon offsets are at their best when they are educational, teaching people about their environmental impact by measuring it. So we particularly dislike the approach of a voluntary contribution towards the average carbon emissions of a festival attendee... it removes the learn-through-measurement approach that is carbon offsetting's biggest benefit.

  3. Educate

  4. Engage

    Nothing is as powerful as getting attendees to participate. Greening and other "socially responsible" activities shouldn't be seen primarily as a "cost" to an event, but as means to your ends, as part of the festival community:

    • Encourage attendees to share their travels, starting the celebrations early.
    • Ask for volunteers who'll introduce their dinner table or camp group to your conference's greening goals, set up a green tent at the festival, or ask for volunteers to monitor and educate at the recycling and composting bins.
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