‍Bristol’s Big Green Week — Inspiring Change, Europe’s Biggest Festival of Sustainability‍

Background Information

Bristol aims to become a European Green Capital city, with a low carbon footprint and high quality of life. However, many people are unaware of the scale of the issues, so we decided to set up a world-class international festival to raise the profile of sustainability issues in a way that reached people who wouldn’t otherwise be interested. Our aim was to establish a festival that would attract worldwide interest as well as develop new thinking, to bring together the world’s most foremost thinkers and experts in delivery, with as many members of the public as we could.

We involved over 60 different organizations, a team of over 200 volunteers and reached an audience of around 40,000 people, but with a budget of less than £130,000. 

Goals of the Initiative

Our primary goal is to establish Big Green Week as Europe’s most important festival of sustainability. We also aimed to establish innovative new ideas for marketing our messages, holding events with new partnerships to reach new audiences, and discovering new ways for the city to deliver projects.

In the first year, our secondary goal was to engage over 35,000 people in thinking about sustainability, inspiring them to change their behavior, particularly in areas such as using renewable energy, changing their mode of travel from cars to buses, bikes or walking, and to have greater consideration for the natural environment. Part of this goal was to ensure we reached beyond the current audience to people in deprived communities.

Parties and Partners to the Initiative and Resources Used for Implementation

The festival was delivered by a partnership of public, private and not-for-profit organizations; the lead agencies were the Bristol Green Capital Partnership and Forum for the Future, who co-curated the core festival. They were supported by Bristol City Council, Wessex Water, Triodos Bank, Good Energy, Bristol Natural History Consortium, Frank Water and the Schumacher Society. There were also over 200 volunteers from across Bristol who helped in the preparation and operation of the festival. 

The resources used for implementing the initiative include:

Three business sponsors primarily funded the core costs of the festival. However, much of the festival was organized by the partner organization. For example, the Bristol Natural History Consortium organized and paid for the Festival of Nature, and the Schumacher Society organized and paid for the Schumacher Talks. In addition, Bristol City Council committed in-kind support of staff time and paid for venues.

The total festival budget was £130,000, of which £90,000 came from sponsors, the rest being raised through ticket sales and donations from partner organizations.

Innovation for the Initiative

Although there are many festivals of many types around the world, we believe Big Green Week is revolutionary. It is unique in the way we have used partnerships to deliver such a big festival with such minimal resources, demonstrating that other cities could replicate it without needing a huge budget. We piloted the proposal in 2011, but then massively expanded it to become Europe’s largest festival of sustainability one year later.

Second, the programme of the festival was highly innovative, with different activities designed to attract different audiences. The weekends were aimed at families, with a big food and local produce market, and an electric bike race. Each morning there were a variety of talks, meetings and films, including a theological discussion about the role of faith in sustainability. In the afternoons there were visits to sites of special interest such as a renewable energy sewage plant or nature walks, and each evening there were debates as well as more entertaining events with poetry, music and comedy.

Third, one of the most innovative aspects was the fringe programme, whereby we invited anyone that wanted to run their own BGW event to submit an application to the website. We received 74 fringe event applications — which then took place alongside the core festival. These included growing workshops, art and music events, and also businesses running internal programmes for staff.

There are two primary areas where innovation is being applied. First, the discussions at the various events were pulled together into a report that is now being used to drive policy across the city. Second, there was a collective understanding of 10 simple actions that members of the public could take in order to improve their own personal carbon footprint.

It is incredibly important to generate public support for sustainability, and Big Green Week reached a large number of people in a way that made them feel part of something much bigger. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that many people will do more if they feel they are part of a group, or if their peers are making certain decisions — therefore, this project aimed to make people feel that they were more unusual if they didn’t do the right thing.

In part, the idea for Big Green Week was borrowed from the Edinburgh Festival — a global phenomenon that has grown over many years to be a world leading event. Big Green Week is our equivalent for sustainability. However, new techniques for partnership working were tested during a pilot festival in Bristol in 2011 called Good Living Week, which then became the platform for Big Green Week.

Obstacles and Solutions for Innovation

There is no resistance to this project, only opportunity. However, our primary struggle is to generate enough sponsorship to help the festival grow to its full potential, especially in a time of austerity. We believe it is vitally important to celebrate progress and show that sustainability is as much about having fun as it is about being worried about the future.

Outcomes and Assessments

Outcomes achieved are as follows:

In the first year we have achieved a significant shift in people’s recognition of the brand and a greater understanding of what a green capital is. We have also achieved a breakthrough in persuading decision makers that a “green capital” is a unique selling point for Bristol that is now being integrated into mainstream processes such as inward investment and tourism. There has been a significant shift in attitudes from businesses, taking onboard the issues of resource scarcity and climate change. Over the course of one week, we have achieved much more than had been achieved in several years previously.

We have also set up a “do-nation” process whereby people can generate carbon savings in between the festivals that individuals can undertake in response to things that they have learned at the festival.

For several years now, Bristol has been working towards designation as a European Green Capital city. However, this award is quite bureaucratic in nature, and does not necessarily appeal to the general public. Big Green Week aims to help residents of Bristol feel really proud of their green credentials, as well as give Bristol a far higher profile as a leading green city. Indeed, the UK government as well as many other major organizations now see Bristol as the place to try out new projects or policies. The Deputy Prime Minister recorded his specific support for Bristol in this regard, the video of which can be found on the Green Capital homepage.

Assessments are as follows:

We have two levels of evaluation: of the festival itself, and of its impact on the general population.

The project evaluation showed that we had reached a high proportion of our intended audience, and exceeded our expectations for reaching people outside the city. Our press coverage in the two weeks prior to the festival made it one of the most freely publicized events in the UK. (We did not pay for any direct marketing). The event feedback was some of the most positive we have seen, with positive responses exceeding 80 percent in all areas.

The evaluation also showed that an estimated £1.8 million was generated for the city over the nine days.

The project is designed to grow over a five year period, and we are using the Bristol “Quality of Life” annual residents’ questionnaire to estimate our impact across the city. This data will be available from 2013 onwards and looks at people’s general satisfaction and understanding of green issues. A direct causal link between this survey data and the festival is unlikely to be found, but we are hoping to see a correlation over time. 

Methods Applied

The primary methodology developed for this project was one of a “distributed network” – whereby, rather than having a single big venue with a core team, the festival was coordinated across many different sites and organizations. This enabled us to engage a far wider audience, using other organizations’ specialist skills at the same time as engaging those organizations themselves in a process that would help them also to find new ways to run their operations more sustainably.

Benefits to Other Cities

Many green organizations are highly effective in establishing new projects that appeal to ‘deep green’ people. Big Green Week is different in that it aims to engage a far broader range of people in a way that helps many more people engage and change their behavior. Big Green Week festival process has been developed in such a way that can be easily and relatively cheaply replicated elsewhere. Indeed, we have already been invited to talk to several other cities in the UK that wish to follow suit.

In just one year, Big Green Week has established Bristol as a world leading sustainable city, and in doing so helped contribute to coming second in the European Green Capital Award 2012. Bristol has re-entered the EGCA competition, and it is hoped that BGW 2013 will this time help Bristol win.

We would be extremely excited to share our learning with other cities around the world, and demonstrate how important and easy it is to organize and run an event such as this that can reach a much bigger proportion of the general public than other green initiatives.