AGF Insider: Adrian Bossey on AI & sustainability
Welcome to AGF Insider, our insightful series where we bring you monthly interviews with industry experts.
Each month we catch up with an industry leader in the sustainability world to find the current trends and best practices
This month, we catch up with Adrian Bossey - Chair of the Association for Events Management Education (AEME) and a Trustee of Attitude is Everything.
What are the best practices that you are seeing give the best results?
Sustainable practices which respond to the climate emergency are not always conducive to accessibility, for example, most composting toilets built on site at music festivals require the user to climb steps to access them. I have been acting as lead Trustee on Attitude is Everything's 'No Climate Action Without Us' sustainability toolkit which suggests ways to make disabled people’s access to live events environmentally sustainable. The toolkit was developed in partnership with Julie’s Bicycle, and A Greener Future and has now been downloaded over 800 times and is starting to inform best practices across the sector.
What trends have you seeing this the past year?
I am particularly interested in social sustainability and have been working with audience members who are d/Deaf, disabled or neurodivergent to facilitate experiences with haptic technologies. To date we have worked with haptic vests and haptic flooring as part of the LAAA project. There is definitely a nascent trend around using haptics to increase accessibility at festivals and events, so it was great to see Deaf Rave's vests being included in the Design and Disability exhibition at the V&A this year alongside the launch of the Music Haptics function and Haptics Hits playlist for I-phones, which I would say hints at future possibilities...
What are the obstacles?
Audience travel represents by far the largest single environmental impact of festivals and events. This makes news from The Association of Independent Festivals that at least 96 UK festivals have closed since 2019 particularly relevant. This is a significant obstacle to embedding sustainability across our sector because smaller, more local festivals and events are inherently more sustainable than larger, corporatised events which draw audiences from further afield. The impact of audience travel across the sector is made even worse by the growth in capacities of 'mega' festivals such as Glastonbury and the disproportionate audience travel associated with mega tours from artists including Taylor Swift.
What’s the next big thing in sustainability in events?
AI in all it's forms is going to be incredibly important. As well as impacting all elements of event delivery, it will drive new formats and alter audience's relationships with live performances. With this in mind I have been exploring audience perceptions of the relative 'liveness' of augmented festival experiences which will be crucial in driving uptake of new formats with potential to improve social sustainability. As part of this I have developed a liveness scale, which I hope will be adopted by the sector.
What would be the biggest game changer from your perspective?
Because mega events are often too big to be sustainable, I think AI which provides authentic 'live' festivals could be a game changer. Brain computer interfaces and other scary products are on the horizon, which will fundamentally challenge physical human experiences and could reduce audience travel, etc. I have been thinking about how senses other than sound and vision can impact our experiences of music, so now haptics can show us what music feels like I am wondering what it might taste or smell like? However we feel about AI, in the not too distant future it will undoubtedly be able to show us! Therefore, I'm really looking forward to chairing the AEME AI panel at GEI 2026 and hope to see you there!
Keep an eye out for next month's edition of AGF Insider, where we'll bring you more expert perspectives and fresh ideas!
