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Tag archives for music

Summer, sun and serious business

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Inide-the-Tallberg-tent

Tällberg Forum started off on Thursday in a sizzling hot tent. Photo: Sara Jeswani.

I have already written about Swedish music festivals with a green thinking. But there are also festivals and forums that look at things from the opposite angle: having sustainability as its focus, but adding culture.

Yesterday I went to the opening of Tällberg Forum in Sigtuna not far from Stockholm. The aim of this annual forum is to gather business people, scientists, politic leaders and NGO representatives to discuss big issues, like:

treehugging-girl

Photo: Sara Jeswani.

- Can technology help us not to crash into the planetary boundaries?
- How will the world produce food for all its inhabitants?
- How take care of the Actic region, which is caught between the effects of climate change and the hunt for minerals and oil?
- How acn we renovate the Swedish “Million programme” houses in a sustainable way?

During the coming days the participants will have a lot to dig into. Many of the seminars will be broadcasted live in the Internet too, for anyone to follow.

But Tällberg Forum isn’t the only one aiming at difficult topics. In the end of July a Scandinavian festival on “New Sustainable Living” opens its doors in Karlstad MAP. Future Perfect calls itself an adventure in living well. “Defining sustainable living as saving the planet is boring. Defining it as social potential is cool. What’s so hard about that?” they write.

Being a cooperation between more theoretical actors and the No More Lullabies artist collective, it nice to see that they write out the names of their speakers (international sustainability “celebrities” like the designer John Thackara and the author and architect Carolyn Steel) in just as big writing as the music artists coming to perform (for example Titiyo and Loney Dear).

In three days the festival will explore themes like local transition, the psychology of sustainability, international development and resilient cityplanning.

 

The-Tallberg-tent

The Tällberg tent. Photo: Sara Jeswani.

fiddlers

One of the cultural ingredients of Tällberg Forum: Swedish fiddlers. Photo: Sara Jeswani.

 

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

July 1, 2011

Music festivals that go green

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Way-Out-West

The people behind Way Out West do their best to think green when they fill the park Slottsskogen in Gothenburg with music. This year with artists like Prince, Kanye West and Robyn. Photo: Sima Korenivski / GFC

The Swedish holiday season is soon about to take over this country. After having celebrated Midsummer on Friday, most of the country tunes into summer mood.

One sector that tunes up its level though, are the music festivals. Summer is the time to enjoy live music in the open, whether it’s classical music or rock, whether it’s at a big city festival or a small obscure independent thing in the middle of a forest.
Lately more and more of these festivals have started putting a bigger focus on the sustainability aspects, considering that gathering thousands of persons at one place, providing food, drinks and sanitation for everyone, can mean quite a big environmental impact.

Here are some of the ones that have put an extra effort in an environmentally conscious profile:

* Mossagårdsfestivalen (web site only in Swedish) June 17-19. This summer’s first green music festival took place already last weekend. Mossagården is an organic farm in the South of Sweden selling vegetable food-boxes, but once a year they arrange a music festival at the farm with free horsecarriage-taxi from the local bus station and organic food.

* Urkult August 4-6. One of the first green music festivals in Sweden. This year will be the 17:th time that the festival will be held above the ancient carvings at Nämforsen rapids in the North of Sweden. Urkult has urine separating toilet, all food served there is organic and all tdisposable products used are compostable. The festival has its own compost at a nearby field.

* Way out West August 11-13. This festival, held in the largest park of Gothenburg, is active in the development of an environmental certification system for eventmakers. The food is organic, the energy renewable and as a city festival Way Out West doesn’t even have a camping, partly with the argument that a city provides a lot of good existing green infrastructure, so why not use it instead of transporting people and material to a distant place to construct something temporary?

* Saltoluokta folkmusikfestival August 10-14 . One of Sweden’s few festivals in “roadless land” at the Saloloukta Mountain Station on the border of Laponia, with focus on Sweden’s Northern cultures. Get there by a small boat, sleep on a reindeer skin in a sami tent and learn how to joik , (the traditional Sami way to sing).

* Kosterfestivalen July 23-29. Chamber music in the Koster Gardens, that normally serve organic slowfood produced in the gardens. The idea is to combine art, music and nature at a beautiful spot by the sea on the Swedish West coast.

Saltoloukta-folkmusic-festival

Saltoloukta Folk Music Festival couldn’t get much closer to nature, literally speaking. Photo: STF.

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

June 23, 2011

Climate concert goes live on the web

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artistsRecently I heard the Swedish singer-songwriter Ane Brun tell the story about how she started to take climate change seriously. For long she hadn’t wanted to think about the issue, she said, avoiding films such as Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. But when a friend of hers suddenly started to show his personal and very emotional engagement in what will happen to the world if we continue to warm it up, the issue came closer.

After attending the Tällberg Forum summit a couple of years ago it all fell into place, she said. But it wasn’t a very harmonious feeling. Rather like wanting to run out on every street and city square, shouting about her worries and fears.

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Some of the artists performing in the concert. Photo: Stadsteatern.

In a way, this is actually what she decided to do. At the international day of action for the “350 goal” last year she gathered an impressive crowd of Swedish top artists to give a marathon concert during 350 minutes.

The initiative “No more lullabies” has the goal to break through the mechanisms that make both individuals and societies close their eyes, and inspire conversations on climate change through music and poetry – beyond political rhetoric, defensive reactions and self-interest.
“It’s time to wake up. We need no more lullabies.”, they write.

And their work to make these messages come through with the help of culture continues. Yesterday and today Ane Brun and several other great Swedish artists give free concerts in one of Stockholm’s parks, as a part of the annual park theater arrangements.

But the concerts aren’t just for those of us who happen to be in Stockholm this evening – anyone can follow them on the Internet, live streamed on Tällberg Foundations home page.

The concert starts at seven o’clock tonight. Enjoy!

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

August 19, 2010

Music festivals with a green conscience

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Urkult-festival.

The Urkult festival takes place in Nämforsen in the north of Sweden. Photo: Mattias Lundblad.

Summer time is festival time, and during this summer an enormous amount of music festivals have been lining up in different parts of Sweden.

While festivals didn’t always use to give much thought to sustainability, leaving behind parks and other festival sites in different states of devastation, it’s now more and more becoming standard to have an environment policy.

This weekend it’s time for the Urkult festival , in Nämforsen http://kartor.eniro.se/m/IpJeF in the north of Sweden. For the 16:th time visitors gather close to the ancient carvings at Nämforsen rapids to listen to musicians from many parts of the world. The festival has environmental thinking as one of its basic elements. Most of the waste is composted at the spot, as much of the food that is served at the festival is locally and ecologically produced and toilets that separates the urine are used.

Another festival claiming their “green-ness” is Way out West , taking place in my old home town Gothenburg on the 12-14 of August. This year Way out West wants to look specifically at etical production.

Some festivals also charter trains and fill them with activities like live bands and dj:s playing music, making the way to the festival an experience in itself.

There are also lots of artists taking an interest in these issues. One of the most ambitious projects is the environmental artist collective Foot (“Friends of Old Trees”) This collective wants to make the artists environmental role models, and thereby inspire their fans to lower their own environmental impact.

Foot also helps to adapt festivals to a greener “thinking” and once a year they award the best adapted musicfestival in Sweden with The golden Foot prize.

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

August 5, 2010