Clean Scene is a climate action collective started in 2019 by creative sustainability consultant Eilidh McLaughlin along with her partners Fallon and Eva to dream up ideas that would facilitate a more sustainable future for the dance music industry. Their first project was a carbon calculator tool to help DJs and events easily evaluate their carbon footprints, but unfortunately, it was put on hold due to COVID. Over the past year, the collective decided to shift their focus to research, and wrote a report to show how our industry is impacting the climate crisis. The aim is to inspire collective action within the dance music industry.
We at The Brvtalist found this to be a great report and wanted to share its findings. Every industry and the people involved have a responsibility to our planet and it’s great to see something tailored to the dance music scene. Below is a short summary of the report but we urge you to read the full version on the Clean Scene website at: https://cleanscene.club/
-JRS
From Clean Scene:
Clean Scene report on RA Top 1000 DJs shows touring DJs took 51,000 flights in 2019 - equivalent to 20,000 households’ consuming electricity for one year.
A new report from climate action collective Clean Scene researching the Resident Advisor Top 1000 DJ’s touring schedules, finds that in 2019 artists took more than 51,000 flights, emitting 35,000 tonnes of CO2. The report also suggests that the average carbon footprint of a touring DJ is 35 tonnes of CO2 - 17 times higher than the recommended personal carbon budget widely accepted with keeping global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees. The analysis shows that this is equivalent to 20,000 households consuming electricity for one year, powering 8,000 festivals for three days, or pressing 25 million records.
The report, titled Last Night a DJ Took a Flight: Exploring the carbon footprint of touring DJs and looking towards alternative futures within the dance music industry, is published by Clean Scene, a Berlin-based collective made up of music industry professionals who want to create a cleaner, greener, and more equitable future for dance music. At a time when the industry is at a standstill, Clean Scene states that now is the time for a change. The data was not published to blame artists but asks for accountability from all those who are part of the music industry - an industry that profits from oppressive systems that directly correlate to the effects of climate change. The report argues the industry must dismantle these systems which prioritize money, power, and greed at the expense of the climate, race, gender, and economic inequality.
In order to address the problems highlighted by the research, Clean Scene defined some overarching themes for consideration. These include:
planning for future equity
rethinking exclusivity clauses and prioritizing more efficient tour-routing
celebrating and investing in local scenes
establishing agency and promoter networks to provide peer support and sharing best practices
The collective recognizes that the report will trigger critiques and questions surrounding these findings but instead suggests that rather than grandstand in favor of distraction, readers must mobilize, organize, idealize change, and affect it.
Read the full report at: https://cleanscene.club/
