[Go Green] Meidän Festivaali

Meidän Festivaali (meaning ’Our Festival’ in Finnish) strives towards carbon neutrality and our goal is to be carbon-neutral in 2025. To meet this goal, the festival will make a green transition between 2022-2024 funded by the Kone foundation.

An important step towards our carbon-neutrality has been the commission of a carbon-neutral piece written for the festival’s artistic directors, the Kamus quartet. Why commission a carbon-neutral piece and what does that even mean? For Meidän Festivaali to be able to successfully calculate our carbon footprint, we don’t just want to know a lump sum at the end of every festival, but instead, to know beforehand, when all the planning is being done, how much each programme adds in on our carbon budget.

Knowing the estimated carbon emissions of a commission piece will help us better plan our festival within the carbon limits we have set for ourselves. Composer Minna Leinonen was excited to take on this unusual commission, and kept track of the carbon emitted in the creation of her work “… and we are rotating with it” (2023). We added into her calculations the emissions created by the rehearsals, concert production and performance, as well as by the audience. This commission piece had a foot print of 908,9kg CO2e, or as Minna put it, the equivalence of a carbon footprint created by 579 cups of coffee.

While some things prove to be more difficult to calculate than others (for example how the audience travels to/from the concert), we believe the figure we got gives us enough information to use for future reference as we continue our path towards carbon-neutrality.

More info: meidanfestivaali.fi/eng
Sustainability action: meidanfestivaali.fi/eng

(General Editor: Simon Mundy)