Green Your Touring! In a nutshell

A Toolkit for musicians, technicians and all their partners for low-carbon and eco-responsible touring
Under Creative Commons, downloadable for free
An ambitious frame of reference to bring change to our industry, and the support and expertise to achieve it
The #GreenYourTouring campaign, a European dynamic to lower the environmental impact of the music industry, while increasing its positive social impact

The project

The relationship between humans and the natural and built environment is perhaps the most urgent problem facing our planet. The next decade will be determining for all of us and acting against climate change is more urgent than ever. The Green Room is an organisation working on the crucial role the creative community plays in facing the climate change and global environmental challenges, focusing specifically on the music industry. Over the last couple of years, the links between sustainability and culture have become much clearer, though policies which prompt real change are slow to follow.

In this global context, The Green Room is launching a crowdfunding campaign to develop, test and implement the Green Your Touring! toolkit. It aims to address a core problem: the sustainability of travel and transportation of moving musicians and production contingents. We strongly believe that we need to change our ways of working and move towards low carbon creative and business practices. Our aim is to ensure that the arts and culture have integrity by working within the carbon emission limits necessary to ensure a sustainable future, in line with scientific guidance.

The Green Your Touring – a low carbon toolkit for musicians and technicians on the road will feature a range of initiatives, top tips, inspiring stories, case studies, tools and methods. It will address all the steps of the touring process and partnerships with the various stakeholders. The toolkit will offer guidance to find creative ways to reduce this impact in various fields : transport, the handling of waste linked to a nomadic lifestyle, accommodation, the manufacturing and distribution of merchandising, digital impact, communication as well as using artistic practices or adopting a model conduct to stress the importance of acting up on a personal scale and encourage collective engagement, etc.

The toolkit will be written in French first, and then adapted into different European languages, in collaboration with local partners, depending on the funding available. It will be open-source, easily downloadable for free and widely spread with the help of various partners, music professionals and networks. It will support a wide and open sharing of the findings, best practices, methodologies, tools and project results.

Another aim of the project is to give visibility to artists working on Climate Crisis-related issues and/ or strongly committed to environmental matters in their practice. The music industry, as a sector, has a powerful collective imagination and is a trusted voice. Our stories and actions about greener living and ecological sustainability can get people to join in, and we can use our public voices to amplify awareness and help find solutions.

On the long-term, we aim to use the toolkit as a starter to launch an active European dynamic that will co-create a vision for creative sustainability, identify the solutions and good practices, reveal the multiple local initiatives coming from the various territories and create a new narrative on what change might look like.
The environmental impact of the project will be integrated to the process: low carbon travels (trains over planes whenever possible, direct flights, etc) and carbon off-setting, Digital Eco Design principle for online tools, etc.

Moreover, we do not see the Green Your Touring implementation as a linear and individual process but as an open and flexible one, based on continuous improvement, challenging the dominant norm and practices which are often out of sync with our commitment to change.

For this campaign, we are very happy to collaborate with the label I Will Play This Song Once Again Records.

For the label’s last ever release, available exclusively via our campaign, they have once more managed to gather some very fine musicians: Chantal Acda, Will Samson, Mélaine Dalibert, Frànçois Atlas, Sylvain Chauveau, Half Asleep, Stranded Horse. As always on the label, each artist will record a version of a song personalised for every contributor choosing this unique counterpart.

Launched by Florent Garnier and Sylvain Chauveau in 2012, I Will Play This Song Once Again Records is a Brussels-based label inviting international musicians to replay and re-record a new, personalised version of one of their songs for every buyer, as if they were impossible to duplicate.

Each copy being unique, it gives value and singularity to recorded music. I Will Play This Song Once Again Records also organise listening sessions and sound installation directly linked to the label’s work, focusing on deeper listening of music.

The Team

Gwendolenn Sharp - After working for various festivals, venues, cultural organisations and environmental NGOs in France, Poland & Tunisia for 15 years, she founded The Green Room in 2016 and developed tools and creative solutions to support a transition towards a more sustainable music industry without compromising the essence of artistic work.

Ludovic Chatelais – President of The Green Room. Insurance, travel & air logistics specialist for 20 years. Enjoys old sailboats, islands, Cuban music, vintage guitars, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and contemporary philosophy.

Madeleine Bartschies – Secretary at The Green Room, dreams of a world where people take matters into their own hands. Passionate about waste issues, which she sees and analyses everywhere she goes, as well as Zero Waste, she aims to make people aware of the impact of their handling of waste.

Emmanuel Revah – Self-taught IT specialist (system administration among other things). Recently devoted to advocating open-source software and the decentralization of the internet. Likes humour, especially during his conferences, which recently made him turn to stand-up comedy.

Yann Tambour – Associated Artist, first known for his work as Encre, a project combining samples of strings, piano and voice and then Stranded Horse through which he developed his own approach to the kora, a West-African harp as well as the classical guitar.

Toolkit Artwork : Anne Brugni

Timeline

17 october 2019 #GreenYourTouring Campaign launch at MaMA Festival et Convention in Paris (France)
8&9 november 2019 Presentation at Conférence & Festival Nouvelle Prague (Czech Republic)
14 november 2019 KissKiss Dating, Cherbourg (France)
21,22&23 november 2019 Presentation at Rencontre Musique & Festival Linecheck in Milan (Italy)
13 december 2019 7ème Journée 1001 événements s'engagent in Nantes, France
22&23 january 2020 Espace DD / BIS-Biennales Internationales du Spectacle (Nantes)
Spring/Summer 2020 Green Your Touring! Toolkit release

Partners

Green Your Touring! a toolkit for musicians and technicians on the road