A presentation by Festival Republic

Further to Minute 30 of the meeting held on 10 March 2022, James Crosbie, Assistant Director of Planning, Transport and Regulatory Services, introduced Melvin Benn, Victoria Chapman, Charlotte Oliver and Noel Painting of Festival Republic who gave a presentation on the 2022 Reading Festival.  The presentation particularly focused on the issues of safeguarding, welfare and sustainability:

·      Festival Republic had continued to concentrate on providing a safe and secure festival, working with partners and local schools to look at effective messaging;

·      A help map had been made available showing the locations of help hubs, medics etc across the festival site;

·      The site had operated the Ask for Angela scheme for women and girls who felt vulnerable, threatened or unsafe, and regular tests had been carried out to ensure that all festival personnel were aware and able to help;

·      The timings had been amended to allow early bird arrivals;

·      Pre-event communications had included low carbon travel, a tent-buying guide and other sustainability measures that could be taken by festival-goers, all of which had been underpinned by the Take It Home message and 35% fewer tents had been left behind this year;

·      Food and beverage vendors had used a traffic light system to highlight dishes that had a lower carbon footprint;

·      Artists had supported and promoted sustainability during their sets;

·      Peer to peer engagement had worked well to normalise sustainability among festival-goers and the free eco-campsite area had been particularly successful and popular with those who had camped there;

·      The number of unlicensed and unregulated water taxis operating during the Festival, had been reduced significantly;

·      Those festival goers who had been removed from the site had been treated sensitively and efforts had been made to ensure that they got home safely.

The Committee discussed the presentation and took the opportunity to ask further questions of Festival Republic regarding the safety of unaccompanied 16 and 17 year-old festival goers, the difficulty of controlling non-eco friendly items brought into the site by festival goers and the introduction of a Challenge 25 policy from 2023.  Festival Republic stated that they would send further details of recycling rates to officers once all the data had been analysed.

Resolved -    That Festival Republic be thanked for an interesting and informative presentation.