GDIF 2024 | London’s free, annual outdoor performing arts festival 23 August-8 September 2024
We are committed to understanding, measuring, improving and communicating our environmental performance.
FESTIVAL.ORG are continuing on an established journey to reduce carbon emissions and find creative solutions to work in a greener and more sustainable way. We work together with our Artists, Staff, Funders, Partners & Suppliers on the understanding that action to tackle the climate crisis is collaborative.
We see measurable change through training & upskilling, adaptations to operations & procurement, considered programming choices which champion environmental action, and through smarter, more accurate data collection.
How we remain accountable
• We report environmental data annually to Julie’s Bicycle CC Tools and measure our CO2 emissions (CO2e)
• We review annually and implement an Environmental Policy
• We review annually and implement an Environmental Action Plan
• We are a pledge member to Vision for Sustainable Events (formerly Vision 2025)
• We are a lead partner of Eco’Operation platform to tour outdoor arts more sustainably, via an international network of UK and European festivals
• We are part of various sustainability led networks to stay up to date with best practice, new technological advancements, and knowledge sharing across the sector.
Our Journey to Becoming More Sustainable
We are mindful of our capacity and resource as a small, charitable arts organisation when approaching sustainability and the climate crisis. We do not use carbon offsetting directly, and instead look to make financial investments into incremental problem solving, to tackle our most significant carbon footprints.
Here are 2 case studies from the past 2 years of Greenwich+Docklands International Festival (GDIF), demonstrating the reductions in our emissions of identified ‘problem’ footprints:
READ: Artist Travel Case Study: Favouring Trains Over Flights
READ: Greener Power Case Study
At Greenwich+Docklands International Festival, we saw over 50% reduction in CO2e from 2023-2024, demonstrating a significant success from target setting and in line with our pledge to Vision Sustainable Events, by addressing the root of the problem. We have recently moved into a new office in a pedestrianised district, which uses green energy, and hope to have data made available to us to report upon moving forward.
It Is important to acknowledge that, as data collection tools become more thorough and greener technologies become more effectual, we are likely to see rises across certain CO2e data, owing to ever improving accuracy. We will continue to report on the qualitative progressions that the organisation is making, as well as the qualitative data, to tell our story.
