Combined Output Portfolio: Fields of Green: Jo Mango and Friends

Recording and performance of songs collaboratively exploring what role music festival communities might play in responding to the global challenge of environmental sustainability.


Research Imperatives:

This research was one strand of an AHRC-funded interdisciplinary mixed-methods research project which focused on the three stakeholder groups physically present at music festivals (artist, audience and organiser), and employed a co-productive practice-led approach to bridging the gap between academic, industry and artistic practice. This strand focused on working with artists to explore their relationship to sustainability across their festival performances via carbon tracking and workshopping, and then facilitating creative exchange with festival audiences using songwriting and performance practice. The results of all three strands of the research in the context of the wider research questions are published in the following journal article (Brennan, M.; Connelly, A; Lawrence, G.; Scott, J. C. (2019) Do music festival communities address environmental sustainability and how? : A Scottish case study. Popular Music, Vol. 38, No. 1.) and the recordings of the resultant songs can be accessed here: https://olivegrove.bandcamp.com/album/wrack-lines-2

Outputs:

5 songs were premiered in a dialogic performance at Celtic Connections festival 2016 and were recorded and released commercially by Olive Grove records as the Wrack Lines EP. The accompanying artwork was developed and designed out of the mapping of artist travel between festivals in the researched festival season. Subsequent engagement with wider communities includes workshops with climate change / sustainability experts and professional musicians at the University of Manchester, Julie's Bicycle at Somerset House - London, Creative Carbon Scotland at Summerhall - Edinburgh and performances at Manchester Museum (Climate Control festival) and Somerset House (Futures and Utopias festival) documented in the short film 'When Tomorrow Becomes Yesterday'.


Impact:

Song outputs from the project have been broadcast across the BBC radio network, including on numerous programmes on BBC Radio 6 (including Stuart Maconie) as well as on BBC Radio Scotland. Listening figures to these programmes are expected to be over 300,000. The project received national press. All profits from sale of the EP go to community research partner Creative Carbon Scotland to further their work putting culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland