Audience travel is one of the biggest contributors to the carbon footprint of live music events: reducing emissions from audience travel is an industry-wide challenge.

In a 2022 report, researchers Briony Latter and Adam Corner made recommendations for communicating more effectively with audiences on sustainable travel choices, and leveraging the cultural influence of events to create wider change.

In 2023, working with five UK festival and venue partners, these ideas were trialled and tested in a project supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The researchers explored different approaches to messaging about sustainable audience travel that could be scaled up and used for music gigs, festivals and other events. Across the partnerships, results showed the messages led to increases in the use of shuttle buses, public transport and active travel, a reduction in car use, and an increase in social media engagement.

Learnings from the partnerships are presented in this slide deck providing practical suggestions for others to engage live music audiences on climate change through travel campaigns.