This month has been a whirlwind, and it’s been great to reveal our first sector-leading partnership: to pilot implementation of the national Green Events Code with local authorities with Vision: 2025 Launched at LAEOG’s Event Production Show, the pilot will provide local authorities with a free-to-use, simple toolkit to assess an event’s community, accessibility and environmental sustainability impacts. Work is already underway, and it’s been great talking about the project with so many local authorities around the UK. The push to collaborate is fantastic, and it’s great to connect with such a large community of professionals who are all focused on one thing: action.
The toolkit has been developed in order to embed its Green Events Code and the Attitude is Everything Live Events Access Charter into an integrated assessment and advisory platform. It is called DATE, or “Doughnut Assessment Toolkit (Events)” and is rooted in the ethos of doughnut economics. As a practical interpretation of this ethos DATE has been designed to provide an accessible, off-the-shelf solution for local authorities and other organisations to gain attain a better understanding of their events’ commitment and practices in key areas of accessibility and sustainability impact. It simultaneously provides community platforming through an integrated social value model and numerous datasets for local authorities and other organisations to evaluate priorities, allocate funding effectively and identify cost saving opportunities.
Throughout 2023, we will work with Vision:2025 will and a pilot group of local authorities across the UK to trial the code, to develop an understanding of how it can be implemented to best effect in practice for outdoor events across areas such as policy, and assessment for site permissions and tenders.
This work was made possible by the Cheltenham Zero partnership, through which leading arts charity Cheltenham Festivals and the Borough Council were able to provide a highly networked and sustainability-focussed environment.
What’s next?
The DATE toolkit is a template that has been adapted to provide a unified solution to the standardisation of events licensing within an accessible and sustainable framework. There are variations of the toolkit now in development incorporating areas of property, public spaces, planning, business and social care. These new versions can be tailored quickly, are easy to produce and will be explored as a separate pilot starting April 2023.
“It’s been great to help of these organisations collaborate over the past year, with the sole aim of producing something for the benefit of the industry, without a commercial agenda. The potential positive impact of DATE across the events sector is very exciting indeed. This free-to-use toolkit will make a genuine difference across our whole industry and feels like a dream come true.”
- Andrew Lansley
“The Green Events Code represents an opportunity to establish a consistent and work-able approach to sustainability across the live events sector for all stakeholders. We will be publishing a Green Chapter of the Purple Guide by Summer 2023, based on the code, to develop the foundations for wider adoption.”
- Chris Johnson, Vision: 2025 chair
“This tool adds much needed benefits and support to this important area of the industry. It’s a great first step to sign-post and assisting building inclusive practice.”
- Alex Covell, Attitude is Everything Charter Manager
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