[Week 2] From Anguilla to Liverpool

I am finally enrolled on my PhD at Liverpool John Moores University and have gained accessed to the now near-mythical ‘eDocs’. Despite being enrolled since late October, I have not been able to register due to a technicality with my overlapping studies. This now being resolved I have now got access to the full suite of tools from the LMJU Doctoral Academy and have signed up to everything. So keen was I to finally get started that I managed to download my Project Approval Form (PAF) from the aeroplane on which I am currently sitting and subsequently typing this entry.

The mythical and wonderous eDocs portal at LJMU

These nine hours stuck on a metal tube provide ample opportunity for catching up on the ever-growing reading list and planning ahead of my first tutorial next week to discuss both my PAF and an upcoming event “Pop3” – a sustainability conference and networking day held at Future Yard in Birkenhead. I’ve not been to this venue before so very much looking forward to spending the day there, I’ve been aware of it for some time and has popped up on the research radar more than once in being one of the leading lights of community and environmental best-practice in the north-west.

In preparing for both meetings next week, I am continuing to look backwards in order to understand the path forwards; Kierkegaard would be proud of this approach to cognitive due diligence, I am sure. This paradoxical phase of PhD planning feels particularly challenging in how to ascertain the best possible placement of a first step. In trying to create something new, to discover new knowledge, the initial challenge is at least clear if a little daunting: work out where we have reached our limits. From managing research in sustainable events previously I have learned that limitations often appear in a spectrum of narratives spanning everything from identifying best practice to discovering deliberate efforts to promote corporate agendas ahead of community needs.

In looking backwards there are two areas that I think are worth bringing forwards into my PhD that (I believe) will facilitate the best chance of establishing best practice for sustainable music events: community and constructivism. There are many actors and actions underway in the sustainable events ecosystem and working with this community to construct a ‘best fit’ for practice feels like a good place to start. By mapping this community nationally and locally, I would hope that I can start to understand where good relationships exist already, the areas of practice in which Liverpool is leading, and where it can learn. Incorporating knowledge created during the UN Accelerator City project will also help to guide ‘what good looks like’ in terms of a regional approach to designing and implementing environmental standards at events. Ultimately, as environmental challenges grow our options as a species to respond are reduced. To ignore the dynamic world of knowledge and solutions that already exists would be heinously ignorant, indeed Cicero might approve of such a confession.

Todays writing come to you from the mid-point of the North Atlantic

For now, this work must wait as over the next 48 hours I will be delivering a speech on global progress in these areas and launching a free environmental audit toolkit I have created for the Caribbean – an area that is disproportionately impacted by environmental changes despite LATAC being a leading region in sustainable development. The work with Anguilla this week will be a great foundation to explore what might be possible within a closed ecosystem of suppliers, venues, performers and civic convenors – although I’m starting to suspect working with an island 4,000 mile from the UK with a population of just 18,000 people is going to be a (Caribbean) breeze compared to working with a city region that is 27 times its size.