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 is also driven to help Manchester decrease its carbon footprint and we’re determined to find even more ways to be environmentally sustainable for many years to come.” – Steve Mead, Artistic Director

We’re excited to announce that for mjf 2024, with financial support from two Europe Jazz Network Green Pilot Tour grants, we’ll be working 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) will travel 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 have 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 arrive in Manchester from France and Germany by train or other means of green transport. We encourage 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’ll be evaluating this activity after the festival, to review the achievements and challenges of this pioneering initiative.

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’ve worked 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 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 minimise water bottle usage for artists on stage
• We produce site marketing material that can be reused year-in, year-out
• We attend conferences on advances in environmental sustainability
• We use second-hand office furniture and refurbished computers
• We use local suppliers for PA, food stalls and equipment hire
• We work with Emerge, a local sustainable resource management company, to recycle waste