**YOUR VIEWS NEEDED PLEASE** Do music festivals play a role in nurturing social change?

[indie-anna]

Hi Guys,

I am conducting some research into the role of music festivals, and want to hear your views about whether music festivals provide the right kind of environment to bring about social change i.e. are they educational? I am specifically interested in looking at the role of music festivals in educating people about climate change. There are no questions to answer, just wanted to start a discussion really, and love to hear some specific examples of festivals that may have provided people with experiences of a changing nature, good or bad!

your views are much appreciated and will contribute towards valuable research in the music festivals and climate change field.

Thanks!

[FluffyBeanie]

I am specifically interested in looking at the role of music festivals in educating people about climate change. There are no questions to answer, just wanted to start a discussion really, and love to hear some specific examples of festivals that may have provided people with experiences of a changing nature, good or bad!

Thanks!

[ShockTK]

In a word, no.

Climate change is a contentious issue but the idea of talking about saving energy (and the like) when you have a single festival generating enough energy to alter the orbit of the moon would seem a bit ridiculous and hypocritical.

Maybe if you held the festival in a very dark, single tent organically made from the tears of seals featuring performances from the quietest acoustic bands known to civilisation, you'd have something, but even then you'd have to worry about whether the bands were using cardboard-based guitars with strings made from the aluminium of recycled coke cans... and believe me, I've been playing guitars for nearly 20 years and not even Jimmy Page could make a sound worth hearing out of materials like that.

"The Festival Experience" is essentially all about being locked inside a bubble. Now, what this bubble is can be subjective to a lot of different people, but to me, it's a bubble I want to be trapped in where I can escape from the world. Not ignore it, mind you, but escape from it and get some restbite.

Do festivals play a role in nurturing social change? No. Should they? No.

The truth is, festivals offer you the chance to lose yourself in another world. Most people who aren't arrogant and take the time to care about contentious issues like climate change are already aware that the issues exist through watching the news, seeing adverts, etc, so they don't need the same rhetoric and underlined points reiterated to them.

I, personally, am aware of everything that is going on outside this bubble; I am educated on the various social, economic and political issues that affect me and my life... but being trapped inside the bubble of "The Festival Experience", frankly, I can afford to be arrogant and not care for at least one weekend in my life.