Music legends Brian Eno and Jarvis Cocker united for a special keynote session to close yesterday’s Green Events and Innovations conference (GEI16).

The hour-long discussion at London’s Royal Lancaster Hotel was chaired by Cathy Runciman of EarthPercent — a charity dedicated to linking the music industry to some of the most impactful organisations addressing the climate emergency.

Renowned producer and EarthPercent founder Eno previously headlined the event, which is organised by A Greener Future in partnership with ILMC, alongside Norwegian popstar Aurora and Grammy Award-winning artist and multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier.

Eno shared the stage with Pulp frontman Cocker to sound off on the importance of a healthy planet, with the latter gracing the audience with a visual exploration of his “Biophobia”. Here is a selection of highlights from the conversation…

Balancing activism with artistry…
Brian Eno: “I didn’t suddenly want to give up being an artist to solely become a climate campaigner. But I thought, ‘Why don’t I just carry on being an artist, make the money I can make, and give it to the people who are doing the work?’ I’m good at making things and I get paid well for it. They want to make something important too… in this case, they want to save the planet. So, why don’t I just support them?

“There’s a lovely Venn diagram about the Japanese word ‘ikagai’, and it’s how you decide what you’re going to do in your life. The diagram has four circles that intersect and they are: what I love doing, what I can get paid for, what the world needs, and what I’m good at. The intersection of these four things, if you can do it, is your sweet spot. That’s what you ought to be doing.”

“You cannot help being a hypocrite in a system in which you’re entangled”

The fear of hypocrisy…
BE: “Hug your hypocrisy [laughs]. You cannot help being a hypocrite in a system in which you’re entangled. You could say, ‘I’m a real purist, I’m not going anywhere or doing anything because it will involve taking a bus or a train or in some way wearing clothes that have been made somewhere that have been transported via a system that we’re trying to change.’ To some extent, we’re going to be compromised by it, and will hopefully be less compromised as we change. I gave up flying many years ago, and I’ve successfully not flown except twice over the last eight years. It was really hard to do, but it was possible because I don’t tour and because I don’t have any relatives [laughs]!

“However, I understand that it’s not a choice everybody can make. What I recommend is to just do it a little bit better, but don’t do it too often. If you have to go to America, for example, put together as many meetings as possible to avoid repeat flights. It’s such a Daily Mail thing to target someone and make a big story about them after they’ve been photographed with bags of shopping and getting into a car after they’ve complained about fossil fuels. It’s not an important criticism.”

The “difficulty” of making the climate justice movement more inclusive…
BE: “In America, there are over 450,000 different environmental groups. Some may belong to two or three of them, but it’s unlikely that one person will belong to a thousand of them. So there are billions of people just in North America who are somehow grappling with this, and they either may be small groups trying to save a local lake, or a larger group like Friends of the Earth. But the facts are that there are millions, if not billions, of people who are in some way engaged with trying to tackle this important issue. Why don’t we ever hear back from each other?

“In terms of numbers, we significantly outnumber the likes of those climate change deniers over at 55 Tufton Street. Trouble is, we don’t know about each other. There’s a book by American anthropologist Alexei Yurchak called Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More, which is about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the amazingness of being in a system that seemed to be absolutely fixed, set, unchangeable, which suddenly disappeared overnight. And I think this could happen here. I think we could reach a tipping point where everybody realises, ‘Hey, we’re part of this movement!’

“In Yurchak’s book, he says revolutions happen in two phases: the first is when everybody realises that things aren’t working right, and the second is where everybody realises that everybody else realises it. And that’s a critical point, where there’s a sudden coalescence. Everybody is fighting the same fight, so we have to get into that frame of mind. We are the majority, and we have the power. We just have to come together and make use of it.”

“More people were becoming scared of nature, and many of them seemed to believe that nature was turning against mankind”

Being a “biophilic”…
Jarvis Cocker: “I suffer from biophobia, which means I’m frightened of nature. I was probably born in this condition. But having been born in Sheffield, I didn’t become aware of it until later in my life.

“I first realised that this condition was a problem for me when my now ex-wife glued together pages of Mary Motley Kalergis’ illustrated book Giving Birth because I would feel faint at the most explicit images of women giving birth. Before she gave birth to our son, I was seriously worried about passing out or throwing up, but when it actually happened, I was supportive of her and even cut the umbilical cord. I realised at that moment that perhaps biophobia was something I could lose over time if I was prepared to work for it.”

His trip to the North Pole in 2008…
JC: “I went with a small group of fellow artists to the North Pole because we had come to see small icebergs. We were passengers on a voyage around Greenland organised by Cape Farewell, an organisation that took both scientists and artists to polar regions to investigate and react to something which was called climate change. The term was new to me at that point, and it seemed like a more widespread form of biophobia to me. More people were becoming scared of nature, and many of them seemed to believe that nature was turning against mankind.

“We sailed the Arctic Ocean for two weeks, and visited various sites in Greenland. On the very last day, we sailed through a channel to get back to the port we left from a fortnight earlier. I was standing alone at the deck of the ship, and I was looking at this landscape. Suddenly, out of the blue, I started crying. And for the past 15 years, I’ve been trying to find out why that was.”

The myth of a “technological fix”…
JC: “There seems to be a worrying tendency for people to solve the problem of mankind’s effects on the environment by meddling some more. Not very logical. Let me show you this small book called Salmon: A Red Herring, written by the artist duo Cooking Sections which consists of Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe. This book examines the detrimental effects of salmon farming on the Isle of Skye in Scotland, and it’s a very good example of what happens when man tries to play God.

“Here’s an extract: when chemicals are ineffective, salmon are splashed with boiling water over short periods of time to remove the lice caused by intensive farming. This is an imprecise method. In 2016 over 175,000 Scottish salmon were boiled alive during a not uncommon accident. Here’s another one: under the weight of accelerated growth, spines curve, tails shorten, and jaws bend. More than 90% of farmed fish are deformed. How much faith does that give you in a technological fix for climate change?”

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A host of top names within the live entertainment and environmental sectors gathered for the 16th edition of the Green Events and Innovations (GEI16) conference at London’s Royal Lancaster Hotel.

Organised by AGreenerFuture in partnership with ILMC (International Live Music Conference), the leading conference for sustainability was held today as part of ILMC week.

The opening Presenting Ecosystem Collapse: Sponsored by Oil and Gas panel aimed to educate audiences on how to distinguish sponsors’ intentions and ways major music and sporting events can avoid tarnishing their reputations. Moderated by Serendipity PR & Media’s Sangeeta Waldron, the panel’s goal was to emphasise the importance of maintaining values when choosing sponsors.

Citing BP’s sponsorship of a festival in Basingstoke (in which BP Pulse’s EV chargers are advertised for festival-goers with electric cars), Luke Howell of Hope Solutions wondered whether there would be pushback from NGOs and charities towards outdoor events that sign up to such partnerships.

“I would always advocate for avoiding partnerships with such companies, but the fact that it’s such a tough market for events and the music industry these days hasn’t gone unnoticed by oil and gas companies,” he said. “They’re aware that there is a funding deficit, which makes it easier for them to segue into this space.”

GEI16 also saw a conversation about the game-changing potential of The 1975’s recent landmark “carbon-removed” gigs at London’s The O2

Howell reckoned that large-and-small scale music festivals represented the “last bastion of independence” from the clutches of oil and gas companies.

“It’s highly critical to be aware and not fall into the trap of praising BP for offering EV charging stations or Shell for offering HVO fuel, even though in a vacuum, they’re good things,” he said. “But these companies collectively made over £300 billion worth of profit in the last couple of years from extracting fossil fuels from the planet.”

He also referenced a collaborative study between the Guardian and Greenpeace that showed only 0.3% of renewable energy was produced from those sources.

Despite Howell questioned the motivation behind companies using the medium of entertainment to “push themselves into the limelight”. However, he emphasised that open dialogue and transparency between event organisers and potential sponsors — especially when they’ve made billions from the practice of extracting fossil fuels.

GEI16 also saw a conversation about the game-changing potential of The 1975’s recent landmark “carbon-removed” gigs at London’s The O2. Chaired by AEG’s John Langford, the session brought together AEG Europe’s Sam Booth, Mark Stevenson of CUR8, and Claire O’Neill from A Greener Future.

“For us at AEG Europe, a carbon-removed event essentially means measuring everything that goes on in the duration of these events”

“For us at AEG Europe, a carbon-removed event essentially means measuring everything that goes on in the duration of these events,” Booth explained, further elaborating that massive amounts of audience data — including the food & beverage consumed, the merchandise sold, the types of cups used, and the energy & water in the arena — must be collected before the agency can then pay to have the carbon “physically removed” from the atmosphere.

Booth also confirmed that AEG Europe uses the “offsetting” method, which allows them to compensate for their events’ emissions by supporting projects that reduce, avoid, or remove emissions elsewhere.

“The plan is to remove an equivalent amount of emissions created by fans heading to The O2, which would equal an estimate of 100 tons per show,” he said.

When quizzed by Langford on providing a snapshot for future carbon-removed gigs, O’Neill suggested it was a “mixed bag”, where responsibilities are divided between different entities.

“In the case of The O2, the venue is responsible for anything to do with electricity and gas within its confines, the food & beverage is on the catering company that brings them to the venue, the performers are responsible for their movements to and from the venue, and so forth,” she said, adding that 90p of the ticket price has gone towards the initiative.

CUR8 is in talks with other acts about incorporating carbon-removed concerts as part of their upcoming tours

“During the ticket process, we talked to [The 1975], who were thankfully on board, and attendees were already notified of this move, so there were no pushbacks from the fans either,” said Booth.

Stevenson also confirmed that CUR8 was in talks with other acts about incorporating carbon-removed concerts as part of their upcoming shows and tours.

“We’ve been in touch with Metallica, and Lars Ulrich is very keen on this,” he shared.

Another innovative concept pored over at GE116 was the use of mycelium as sustainable material for building props and sets for touring acts. Hosted by Louder Than War’s John Robb, the Greening the Stage panel – which featured Stufish Entertainment Architects’ Zarya Vrabcheva, Pauline Bourdon from Team Love, and TAIT’s Carol Scott – highlighted the necessity of sustainable practices in the live entertainment industry.

Bourdon’s Team Love have already explored the use of mycelium panels as an alternative material for creative industries to use. The Arts Council-funded project has Bourdon visualising a “beautiful ecosystem”, given mycelium’s function as a network of fungal threads that help trees survive.

“I think we’re truly the first generation to fully comprehend what sustainability really means”

“In one instance, we mixed a mycelium strand with hemp, and managed to construct panels of a larger size,” she explained.

Vrabcheva’s extravagant set designs were noted, which help to eliminate the notion that stages made from sustainable materials are usually “austere”. Admitting that it was “challenging” to constantly abide by the practices, she said the long-term rewards are worth it.

“We want to keep creating these experiences, but with added focus on educating our audiences of the massive advantages of working with sustainable materials while they’re enjoying themselves too,” said Vrabcheva.

It was a sentiment that’s shared by Scott, who is a firm believer that music is a driving force to help spread the word of sustainable practices.

“I think we’re truly the first generation to fully comprehend what sustainability really means,” she said. “We’re actually a part of nature itself, and we need to understand that sustainability must be a key part of everyone’s life. There’s no music on a dead planet. We’re actually here to create music on a planet that’s alive and thriving, so I am very optimistic that we’re going to make good choices going forward.”

Across GEI, ILMC, and related events on the schedule, over 2,500 professionals will take part at the Royal Lancaster between 27 Feb and 1 March. GEI’s dedicated website is here.

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The Green Events and Innovations Conference (GEI) will welcome back Brian Eno for a third time, for a keynote conversation with Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker.

The leading conference for sustainability takes place on the 27 February at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London – the first day of the International Live Music Conference (ILMC).

Eno previously headlined the event alongside Norwegian popstar Aurora and multi-Grammy-Award-winning artist and multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier.

This year, the EarthPercent founder will share the stage with Cocker, who will present his ‘Biophobia’. In addition, Eno will appear alongside EarthPercent’s executive director, Cathy Runciman, for the EarthPercent Hour.

“We are over the moon that Brian Eno and Jarvis Cocker will bring such a special experience to the GEI delegates this year,” says Claire O’Neill, CEO, A Greener Future. “GEI, since its inception, has been about uniting the live community and beyond to make a better world for all of us. This is why we love the work of our charity partner EarthPercent and can’t wait to experience and share what we have in store next month.”

“We love the work of our charity partner EarthPercent and can’t wait to experience and share what we have in store next month”

Eno is a renowned musician, producer, visual artist and activist who first came to international prominence in the early seventies as a founding member of British band, Roxy Music, followed by a series of solo albums and collaborations. He founded charity EarthPercent to help combat the music industry’s impact on the planet.

Cocker is a legendary musician and broadcaster who formed the band Pulp while at school in 1978, going on to become one of the most successful British groups of the 1990s. He presented the BBC6 Music programme Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service, as well as the ongoing, award-winning BBC Radio 4 documentary series Wireless Nights. He also has two honorary doctorates and his lyrics have been published by Faber and Jonathan Cape.

News of the keynote comes shortly after GEI unveiled speakers, sessions, exclusive research projects and case studies for the forthcoming edition. For more information on the conference, or to purchase tickets, click here.

GEI takes place as part of the ILMC week, the largest gathering of live music professionals in the world. Across GEI, ILMC, and related events on the schedule, over 2,500 professionals will take part at the Royal Lancaster between 27 Feb and 1 March.

For more information about ILMC 2024, The Arthur Awards, Futures Forum, TEL and London Calling, visit 36.ilmc.com.

GEI is organised by AGreenerFuture in partnership with ILMC. GEI’s dedicated website is here.

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