I have decided to try and make a tool for people who are starting up and want to host a festival for the first time. The goal is to make something, so it is easier for people with less experience to create good festivals. The focus will be on festivals that are in non permanent venues, with or without camping, and with a restricted amount of participants. So street festivals or festivals split between different and existing venues will not be my focus.
The other goal will be to help festival organizers to create socially and environmentally sustainable festivals. So how festivals can have better social impact for participants and for the communities they are in, as well as at least not having a negative environmental impact.
Highly commercial festivals that only want to generate income is not the type of festivals i would want to support with this tool, but rather smaller and independent festivals. Also there are large differences between festivals in different countries, and therefore i will focus on festivals from a Norwegian context, as that is where i have most of my information from.
Festivals i will look at it Norway are the Øya festival and Vinje Rock. These are two very different festivals, but they both work hard on their social and environmental impact. Øya is held in a park in the center of Oslo and is well known for tying to reduce their environmental impact. Vinje rock is a festival held in a national park in the mountains of Norway and has a strong focus on outdoor activities. Vinje Rock being held in a national park means that they also have built a strong culture of reducing their impact on the environment and the direct community they are in. I will look at these two festivals and continue to see what other festivals that meet my requirements, and what we can learn from them.
