environmental sustainability

“At mjf, we’re committed to reducing our environmental impact, both in our year-round activities and on site during the festival. mjf wants to help Manchester decrease its carbon footprint as we work towards being Zero Carbon city region by 2038, and we’re determined to find even more ways to be environmentally sustainable for many years to come.” – Steve Mead, Artistic Director

Here are some of the ways in which mjf has been staying GREEN through the years…maybe you can help us by playing your part?

We work with Julie’s Bicycle – the leading organisation for environmental awareness in the arts across the UK – to develop our policy and action plan that ensures the impact our artists, audiences and staff make on the environment is as green as possible.

• We update our Environmental Sustainability Policies every year
• We report our data on an annual basis to Julie’s Bycycle and to Manchester City Council’s Zero Carbon Culture Commitment
• We have a dedicated Sustainability staff lead in the mjf team
• We encourage our artists and visitors to walk or take public transport to the festival
• All our staff are local to Manchester – we use public transport or bicycle when travelling to and from the office
• We use electronic tickets and artistic contracts
• We use water dispensers for artists on stage – no plastic bottles
• We produce site marketing material that can be reused year-in, year-out
• We take part in sectoral dialogue on advances in environmental sustainability
• We use local suppliers for PA, food stalls and equipment hire
• We work with local sustainable resource management companies, to recycle festival site waste from audiences
• We’re developing a Green Rider for circulation to festival artists and talent development participants that encourages use of green travel and sustainable accommodation and prioritises vegetarian-only and locally-sourced food
• We monitor all festival artist travel and our audience travel where known

Case Study

At mjf 2024, with financial support from two Europe Jazz Network Green Pilot Tour grants, we worked with partners in the UK and abroad to tour two international artists using only sustainable touring methods.

Sarāb (France) and Daniel Erdmann’s Thérapie de Couple (France/Germany) travelled to and from mjf24 and our partners as part of this green touring initiative, to help reduce the carbon footprint of international touring.

Linked to this, we initiated new agreements with our friends and colleagues at selected venues and festivals who share our ambitions and are able to work with us to programme artists touring around the time of mjf. These partners include The Glasshouse ICM (Gateshead), Ronnie Scott’s (London), Howard Assembly Room (Leeds), Bimhuis (Amsterdam), Music Meeting Festival (Nijmegen) and De Doelen Concert Hall (Rotterdam).

The artists arrived in Manchester from France and Germany by train or other means of green transport. We encouraged audiences to do the same for their (hopefully shorter) journeys to the venue to enjoy these powerful and thrilling UK debut performances.

Green Touring currently requires additional planning, more ‘time on the road’ and extra travel costs – that’s on top of the Brexit-related costs of UK entry requirements for overseas artists. We evaluated this activity after the festival, reviewing the achievements and challenges of this pioneering initiative, and aspire to develop this approach in subsequent festival editions.