UK: The Ticket Factory has won the ‘Ticketing Without Barriers Award – Ticketing / Tech Company’ at the Outstanding Attitude Awards 2019. The Outstanding Attitude Awards, run by disability focused charity Attitude is Everything, celebrates excellence in live event accessibility and highlights best practice across the whole event industry. The winners were selected by an independent panel of music fans, artists, journalists and other industry experts. Midlands based business The Ticket Factory was recognised for its pioneering partnership with Nimbus Disability’s CredAbility Access Card, developing and implementing a free registration service that allows customers to link their access requirements to…
Author: Festival Insights
UK: PlayPass has strengthened its UK operations to address intensifying demand for its award-winning NFC technology, promoting Steve Jenner to the role of Managing Director for the UK and Ireland. Jenner, who joined the company in 2015, will lead an expanded team that includes the appointment of Ben Hirons (ex-Gorilla, Peppermint & Creative Bars) who will oversee event delivery. Newly added to the cashless provider’s expanding roster of UK-operated festivals are WeAreFSTVL (the company’s largest cashless UK event to date) and Glastonbury spin-out Beat Hotel. They join the previously announced Black Deer and Merthyr Rising as events that will be…
UK: In response to growing interest and requests from its artists, Coda Agency has partnered with A Greener Festival to provide a Green Artist Rider. The Green Artist Rider has been developed to assist artists, and to encourage a stronger collaboration with promoters and venues. Coda’s Alex Hardee launched the initiative at the Green Events & innovations Conference during ILMC, with the aim to align live music events and tours with the urgent need to reduce single-use plastics, source food with low environmental impact, reduce & balance emissions, and to eliminate waste. The Green Artist Rider is designed to match…
PORTUGAL: BPM Festival has signed a five-year deal that sees it join a growing list of festivals choosing to go cashless with Event Genius. The deal sees the world-famous electronic music showcase take advantage of the Leeds based company’s award-winning cashless solution, Event Genius Pay, as part of an end-to-end service that will also provide online ticketing and access control to the festival. Prior to the festival, BPM fans will only need to create a single online account to buy tickets and pre-purchase credits, which will replace cash across the festival site. Upon arrival, these credits will be loaded to…
UK: Blockchain ticketing startup Citizen Ticket has unveiled a host of new features now available on its platform, including the option for organisers to select a charity to which CT will donate 50% of its booking fees, as well as the ability for customers to transfer tickets to friends and family using just an email address or phone number. Citizen Ticket says that it wants to contribute to social objectives while putting the trust back into the ticketing industry using its in-house developed blockchain technology. Although widely known for powering cryptocurrencies, the fundamental principles of blockchain – transparency, authenticity and…
UK: Ahead of its 10th anniversary edition this summer, Parklife will once again enforce its Green Pledge scheme, in the hopes of reducing the event’s environmental impact. Looking to improve several key areas of the festival’s sustainability efforts, the scheme will see Parklife ban all plastic straws from bars at the event, endeavour to make 60% of its cups entirely non-plastic, and encourage attendees make use of a cup return initiative. With no polystyrene cups or trays used onsite, the festival will also clamp down on the use of sachets by banning them entirely from the event. Parklife will also…
Marie Sabot is Director & co-founder of We Love Green festival and Associate Director of We Love Art. Since 2011, with We Love Greeen she has proven that a major event can work in harmony with the environment, and that a festival can also be a hub of innovative, sustainable initiatives and ideas for the future. We are beginning to clean up our act. From the backlash against single-use plastics to our voracious appetite for local and organic food, in recent years we have witnessed an undeniable sea change in our attitude towards sustainability. At We Love Green, we have…
Festivals have a shared tradition when it comes to embracing progressive movements and ideas. From Glastonbury’s decades-long kinship with the CND to Afropunk’s 50% female line-up and Shambala’s pioneering sustainability practices, festivals often capitalise on their audience’s openness and energy to implement policies deemed too radical for wider society. There’s a prevailing sense that festivals have an opportunity, even a responsibility, to try and counteract some of the influence that right-wing media outlets and government institutions hold over the public imagination. Whether it’s Jeremy Corbyn’s triumphant 2017 Pyramid Stage appearance or Edward Snowden addressing a reverential crowd via videolink at…
UK: Skiddle has revealed that women are buying a record number of tickets to live music events. Over the past five years, women have grown their market share of overall ticket sales by 22%. In 2018, female music lovers out-purchased men by 13% on average. Music festival tickets are where women are most dominant. In 2018, women bought 65% more music festival tickets than men – an increase of 35% on 2017. In recent years, a call for greater diversity across festival line-ups has been the focus of much media scrutiny. Skiddle speculates that a move towards more equal representation…
UK: A Greener Festival hosted its first ever International AGF Awards on March 5, and crowned festivals from eight countries across three continents as winners. The ceremony took place at the Royal Garden Hotel in London, as part of the Green Events & Innovations Conference on the opening night of ILMC 31, and was supported by RES and Video Illusions. To be considered for an award, festivals had to undergo a detailed assessment, site visit, and analysis as part of the evidence-based Greener Festival Award scheme. Winners are those who scored highest across 10 categories throughout 2018. The International Greener…