Behaviour Change & The Events Industry: Abena Fairweather, Founder & Managing Director of Legacy with Charly Cox, Co-Founder of Climate Change Coaches.

https://www.linkedin.com/video/live/urn:li:ugcPost:7171444797025546242/

Events, gatherings, convenings, forums, and conferences. Regardless of what you label it, the design and delivery of the gathering of people is a critical opportunity to engage with sustainability.

But how do you develop and execute high-quality, sustainable, events? And how do you empower Event Managers to feel like a valued part of the green transition, and capable of making a real difference?

Earlier this week, we were joined by Abena Fairweather, Founder & Managing Director of the sustainable event management company, Legacy. We’ve summarised Charly and Abena’s top tips for how to transform the way we run and think about events 👇

1. Purchasing Power:

Event sustainability is really about common sense - using your resources wisely, thinking about how you procure, looking at how you purchase, and evaluating what you do on site. You don’t need to buy lots of sustainable ‘stuff’ for an event. Why not ditch the biodegradable coffee cups in favour of reusable ceramic? Before you buy anything for your event, think about whether it can be borrowed, reused, or recycled.

2. Creativity:

Unfortunately, thinking about the sustainability of an event has become a tick-box exercise, akin to a compliance issue like health and safety. To encourage your team to craft truly sustainable events, you need to help people understand that this is a creative problem and not a compliance problem. Shifting mindsets is a critical part of the Green Transition Coach Programme, a course designed to help you  navigate and overcome those classic push backs:

• ‘We can’t afford to run a sustainable event.’
• ‘We don’t know how to run a sustainable conference.’
• ‘We don’t know enough about sustainability to do this properly.’

3. The Green Aesthetic:

It’s incredible how many of us assume that sustainable events need to look, sound, and feel a certain way. A sustainable event doesn't have a fixed aesthetic, and no, you don’t need to cover everything in plywood or use vast amounts of technology to look and feel ‘green’. Be brave, be sensible, and push back on things that don’t align with your brand.

“What’s the point in organising sustainable events, when nobody else is?”

4. Connecting the Dots:

Isolation is one of the worst enemies of action. It’s a real and present threat to anyone who seeks to change the status quo, so finding ways to connect with other professionals working in the events sector who are interested in sustainability, is a great starting point.

5. Event Communications:

There are gentle ways of communicating your commitment to sustainability to event attendees, and Event Managers often forget how much influence they have over an audience. The following behaviour change tools are all examples of how you can start to shift mindsets at (and before) gatherings:

• Try using nudge theory
• Consider how you use layout, placement, and graphic design
• Think carefully about event language and communication
• Consider incorporating gamification
• Try using ‘the Power of Yet’ - check out a video here

6. Recognising Skill & Impact:

Event management as a skill is so undervalued, and Event Managers need to be encouraged to recognise themselves as powerful actors in the sustainability space- they have a lot of influence! They’re often the only people in an organisation who are in touch with stakeholders across the spectrum. At Climate Change Coaches we see a common trend of people feeling ill-equipped, or too overwhelmed, to comprehend the climate crisis. But instead of reaching for more data, we should be encouraging Event Managers to access their ‘why’ and help them to see how their individual action connects to a larger collective effort.

The climate crisis is largely going to be solved by changing the way people behave at a collective and individual level. How we design and deliver events offers us far more opportunities to influence and inspire sustainable behaviour than we realise.

Interested in learning more? The Green Transition Coach Programme is a great starting point for event professionals who are interested in sustainability, and who need support shifting mindsets within their organisations.