Scripting Mobilities for a Sustainable Artistic Experience

Our Unsustainable Visions of Mobility

Indeed, the transport sector accounts for the largest share of our national carbon footprint (30%). While the time dedicated to travel has remained constant over the ages at one hour per day, the distances travelled have significantly increased due to the transformation of our mobility system. Consequently, up to 79% of the kilometers covered by the French each year are done in individual cars. From the fascination in 1955 for the new Citroën DS associated by Roland Barthes with cathedrals, to Emmanuel Macron’s recent declarations of love for the bagnole (TN: car), the automobile remains to this day an object of passion, despite its documented negative impacts extending well beyond the carbon issue (land use change, biodiversity erosion, air, and water pollution).

A genuine oversight in the ecological transition of the French, the automobile is an indispensable object for the social inclusion of many citizens. Its prominent place in mobility, however, results from a representation of the freedom of the Western man in constant motion, enamoured with autonomy, speed, and efficiency elevated to social values.

However, the depletion of fossil resources combined with the effects of climate change pose a dual constraint on our current modes of transportation, threatening the realization of artistic encounters. This context raises questions about the essence of live performances since mobility is a fundamental component. Cultural practices represent the third cause of mobility for the French, together with leisure activities, following work and education. In this regard, the decarbonization of travel is certainly the greatest challenge for the performing arts to ensure their sustainability, as it calls for a reexamination of the modes of circulation of works, artists, and audiences. This imperative becomes a major focus of orientation for cultural policies, notably through the adoption of aid programs conditioned on the implementation of dedicated action plans.
It is established that audience mobility plays a crucial role in the carbon footprint of music venues and festivals, whether they operate in urban or rural spaces. It accounts for up to 75% of emissions due to travel, which is two to four times more than the transportation of artists and works, according to a recent study conducted by AJC. To this observation is added a growing demand from regular attendees of musical events, with a large majority (83%), across all social categories, considering it important for organizers to communicate and make progress on societal and environmental issues.

Despite a cultural landscape now infused with ecological urgency, professionals express a sense of powerlessness in the face of decarbonizing mobility. This situation represents a deadlock, forming a triangle of inaction: audiences await the implementation of transportation offerings by cultural entities, these entities turn to local authorities responsible for mobility, whose budgets are primarily directed towards commuting, while funders demand the implementation of a transition process without allocating financial or human resources.
Although these challenges are not at the core of the professionals’ expertise in the sector, a lack of involvement would imply sacrificing the conditions of artistic encounters on the altar of cultural exception. Faced with these contradictory demands, cultural operators must undergo training and reconnect with a capacity to act specific to their field of expertise. 

The means of decarbonizing the transportation sector can be categorized into three types: improvement actions, change actions, and avoidance actions. As demonstrated by Aurélien Bigo, a specialist in transition within transportation, the sole evolution of vehicles and infrastructure will not enable the deployment of sustainable mobility. It must be coupled with a change in behaviors through modal shifts and increased frugality by reducing distances. While cultural operators may not have direct control over the improvement lever, as it depends on technological optimizations, they nevertheless have the capacity to seize the remaining levers: change and avoidance.

Changing the mobility practices of cultural audiences generally involves the implementation of incentives, such as a discount on ticket prices for those using public transportation or complimentary snacks for enthusiastic cyclists. However, if there is a desire to increase the modal shift rate, it requires coercive measures to disadvantage solo thermal car use, whether in economic terms (paid parking) or comfort (distant parking). The acceptability of such measures requires well-adapted, effective, and democratic alternative proposals. This is a complex condition, but structures can rely on the attachment of participants to “their” venue, “their” festival. These emotional communities are integral to the cultural ecosystem, acting as stakeholders to empower through an inclusive and decentralized approach to ecological redirection. Looking at the secluded mountains of Wales, for example, the intimate folk festival Fire in the Mountain has chosen to redirect the cost of its parking towards funding shuttles and delegated coordination to volunteers who become territorial ambassadors. These individuals receive a reduced rate to organize local gatherings of festival-goers who are geographically close to ensure the filling of buses. While we can conceive the unifying potential of this system scaled to each local audience, there must still be a preexisting desire for ecological redirection within the community for it to be embraced.

However, we observe every day that environmental data and scientific discourse prove insufficient to implement the transformation of individuals’ habits: this requires a disruption of imaginations. If cultural objects have one recognized property, it is their incredible ability to make moments of alternative narrative possible, like an upsurge of the exception within the norm. Festivals, in particular, embody all the dimensions of a temporary city where avant-gardes can be built and experimented with. Beyond financial incentives and technical-constraining measures, cultural organizations are the most legitimate entities to deploy a storytelling of the possibilities of ecological transition through the approach of artistic scripting. Thus, let’s emancipate ourselves from the usual frameworks of performing or enjoying art to integrate the participants’ mobility time at the heart of the event.

In this paradigm, means of transportation become an integral component of the artistic experience – let’s think of concerts on trains and stations during the Transmusicales de Rennes – sometimes even constituting the identity of the project, as seen with the Slowfest collective and its cyclo-festival Les Furtives or the Festival International des Arts de Bordeaux with its bike-discoverable programming. At La Grainerie, a subsidized venue in Toulouse, the storytelling of movements takes the form of an audio podcast, Balades Sonores, with episode durations calibrated based on the walking time from the subway exit. Thus, the imperative of transforming mobility is a precious opportunity to infuse wonder into our choice of sustainable modes of transportation: a fruitful process for imaginations, through which leaders have the opportunity to align ecological issues with the artistic purpose of their structure. The avoidance lever in the transition of transportation modes outlines a reading of mobility through the lens of sufficiency. Indeed, the carbon emission level of travel is correlated with its distance and speed. The farther and faster we go, the more negative our impact will be on the environment. This reality inevitably calls for slowing down our mobilities.

In a festival, if only 3% of participants come by plane, it can represent up to 60% of the carbon emissions from audience travel. Should we then choose between reducing the frequency of cultural outings or reducing their distance? An ontological dilemma in our understanding of what artistic encounters entail. Considering the circulation of creations inherent to any form of live performance, it is necessary to act on the geographical origin of audiences through sectoral actions of cooperation, in order to avoid exclusion. At this moment, decarbonization goals collide with our development models structured by imperatives of scope broadening and territorial attractiveness. Mobility sustainability is indeed achievable at the regional or even national level but certainly not at the international level, given the projections of the aviation sector. This implies sizing cultural projects based on living areas, placing jazz and improvised music festivals in a paradox of scale, given that these so-called “niche” aesthetics attract more distant audiences. Every project creation could be crossed by a constant questioning: is the format adjusted to its territory? Since a simple overflow generates an exponential increase in carbon emissions due to long-distance mobilities and a misalignment in the event of a crisis, considering the increased dependence on extraterritorial resources.

Furthermore, determining the right size of an event proportionally to its ecosystem brings forth multiple co-benefits (local cooperation, conviviality and inclusivity, well-being at work, potentialities, and the impact of the experience, etc.), as perpetual growth of audiences proves unsustainable both in terms of environmental footprint and sociocultural reach. This exercise of renouncing excessiveness simultaneously opens the door to densification for those whose mobility is economically, socially, or geographically restricted. Initiating a redirection of modes of transport also implies, in essence, reaching new audiences.

Finally, the relevance of these change and avoidance actions in the transition of mobilities depends on a prerequisite organizational lever to be activated before any action plan. This involves, first and foremost, data collection in a comprehensive quantitative and qualitative research approach, which may include:

• Studying audiences and their travel practices to establish an initial measure used as a reference benchmark from which to track the progress of sustainable mobilities.
• Cartographic analysis, whether to list pre-existing mobility solutions or highlight interdependencies within the ecosystem.
• Consultations with other operators in the area, paying attention to neighboring sectors facing similar issues, such as sports events.

This dispassionate understanding allows for the collective identification of steps leading to decarbonized mobilities. While it is essential to capitalize on experiments conducted elsewhere—such as the ambitious national program Festivals en mouvement—it is crucial to demystify the existence of a single replicable solution from place to place, a necessary condition in order to keep hoping. The ecological redirection of audience mobilities is envisioned from the inherent interconnections of each project, community, and territory.

This process will democratically address complex cases when, locally, the continuation or cessation of certain projects is discussed in light of their unsustainability. However, it also outlines paths of exaltation at the heart of live performance’s pulsating core, showcasing its mastery in overturning an obsolete future into a desirable one.