A festival for the future

The whole world must transfer to sustainable practices. This applies to all people and all businesses. Everywhere. This means that the classical music industry also needs to make major changes in the coming decades, and Fairplay Chamber Music’s ambition is to find and implement the solutions that can inspire and drive the sector forward.

Furthermore, culture has the potential to touch and influence our inner worlds and models. It could be our perception of other times, places, people or ideas. And rarely has humanity been in greater need of finding new mental models for a better future than now. Hence, FCM’s festivals grapple with the major issues of our time and try to make them more tangible. In this way, FCM hopes to actively contribute to a more equal, peaceful and inclusive future.

CO2 emissions

Today plane travel is by far the largest environmental burden for the classical international music industry. In Europe, the average emission per person and year is around ten tons of CO2 equivalents, which is already many times more than what is globally possible. An individual musician can easily emit hundreds of tons of carbon dioxide equivalents in a single year, just because of air travel. An orchestra, hundreds of thousands of tons. We think both buyers and sellers have a responsibility and as a buyer, FCM chooses to only hire musicians who have agreed not to make any extra flights in order to play at the festival. This policy also applies to our academy students who commit to travelling fossil-free to and from the event.

We are convinced that fossil-free long-haul flights will be an option in the future, but right now it is not reasonable for a festival to cause emissions of this size.

Depending on a person’s or a business’s geographical location, this type of measure may not be possible to implement. We are fully aware of this and hope that everyone can find the solutions that reduce their emissions as best they can based on their individual conditions.

In addition, the festival participants are served vegetarian and predominantly locally sourced food. This also reduces the festival’s CO2 emissions due to the shorter transports and reduced resource use during production.

Environment and biodiversity

The town of Järna is widely known for its sophisticated organic farming and its successful work with biodiversity. FCM reaps the benefits and only serves organic food from predominantly local farms. Audiences can take this opportunity to visit the producers and learn more about the methods that lead to increased biological diversity and resilience.