Review: Shambala – ‘A beacon of festival sustainability’

It’s a relief, after a summer of festivals big and small, to settle into a weekend with sustainability in mind.

My other hat, as fiddler in an experimental folk-rave act, takes me far and wide from May to September, the ever-expanding season of the UK’s jam-packed festival scene.

With my climate-conscience weighing heavy, a contractual obligation to spend most weekends at events sporting clown-size carbon footprints provokes uncomfortable levels of internal conflict.

Enter Shambala Festival. This beautifully wild, sparkling beast has the environment at the heart of its operations and embeds equality and diversity into its very spirit.

Shambala is a glorious celebration of the weird and wonderful

Over my ten years or so of touring, there’s been some change for the better but bigger and more mainstream events remain challenging for the eco-minded. Walking past cheap chicken nugget stalls, wading through piles of trash or driving home through fields of discarded tents are common and confronting experiences.

4.9m people attend UK festivals each year, generating 25,800 tonnes of waste and 24,260 tonnes of CO2 emissions; for context, one person flying to America and back generates 1 tonne. Initiatives encouraging public transport, recycling and reusable cup use (for example) are helping, but the sector’s overall impact continues to rise as event and attendee numbers increase.

So it’s magnificent that organisations like Vision 2025 – their name referring to the industry’s aim to halve its emissions by 2025 – and Julie’s Bicycle exist to educate and inspire events to do better.

And that shining lights like Shambala show us it can be done, and so bloody fabulously.

The Imaginarium hosts an expansive programme of talks, spoken word and literary artists

A good festival needs to offer, at the least, quality music with top class sound systems, affordable food, decent toilets, a calm camping spot and somewhere comfy to sit – or vibey to rave – when it’s raining.

Shambala manages to provide all this and more while baking sustainability into everything they do.

It’s the brainchild of Bristol’s Kambe events, who say the festival is “completely and utterly committed to being sustainable, circular, regenerative, net positive, earth and life respecting and future thinking” because “it’s in our DNA.”

Their numbers confirm this: they’ve reduced the festival’s carbon footprint by over 90 per cent, moved to 100 per cent renewable energy and eradicated single-use plastics.

The wide-range of food on offer is all vegetarian and plant-based. Shambala eliminated meat, fish and dairy milk in 2016 due to “undisputable evidence that a diet predominantly based on meat and fish is having a devastating impact.”

Their “most controversial and risky environmental initiative to date” has eliminated 100 tonnes of emissions per year and 33 per cent of festival-goers reported reducing their at-home intake as a result – testament to what academic Natasha Martirosian calls the “hidden power in festivals to promote climate-positive behaviour.”

Not only this, but the plant fibre plates and bowls are sent from recycling points to a nearby farm where they’re turned into compost and used to grow vegetables for next year’s festival.

The festival features talks on all things nature, sustainability and climate

And the programme is second-to-none. Hedonists are happy here, coexisting chaotically with those poring over the expansive talks programme and the crafty crew getting hands-on with cottagecore, cuttlefish jewellery, ceramics, wood carving and blacksmithing.

Talks cover a range of climate-adjacent topics, from wild plant propagation to ending our fossil fuel addiction. Jasmine Isa Qureshi’s piece on queer ecology was particularly illuminating.

The community garden, overseen by Bristol legend Mike Feingold of Glastonbury Festival’s iconic permaculture area, offers examples of food growing and plant use. There are nature-spotting and foraging walks, herbal medicine and mushroom growing workshops, and even Bristol’s Street Goats make an appearance, the furry face of the debate around sustainable meat production and a fun diversion for kids and adults alike.

The best thing about Shambala, of course, is that it knows how to have a good time. There’s no evident worthiness sometimes found at earth-first events. And with a whole bunch of Bristol artists performing, this musician and climate editor feels very at home in that field.

From quality punk and psych of Menstrual Cramps, Dog Daughter, and My Octopus Mind; to Snazzback’s whacked out nu-jazz and Jamu’s hip hop collective; party starters Dr Meaker and avant garde bass-heavy electronica from Tikoda and Grove, the city is represented by its best of every genre.

Shambala caters to all musical tastes

Chuck in some DnB yoga, a spot of shambolympics, a giant toothpaste tube walking arm-in-arm with a glittery standard lamp and fully functional set of curtains, a few thousand fake moustaches and an enchanted forest, and it’s easy to see why Shambala is regarded as the (oat) cream of the crop.

Gatherings allowing an escape from everyday lives are vital, especially in this era of relentless doom and gloom news and climate anxiety. We need spaces to feel free, explore creativity and new cultural ideas, eat naughty foods and dance til we fall over.

With Shambala we can do all this while worrying less about the dent we’re leaving on the world. We can get our sparkle on and go wild for the weekend, then head home knowing we’ve contributed to something positive – a spread of ideas and ways of living that will help to create a kinder, more nature-friendly world.

Festivals old and new could learn a lot from the Shambala family.

I’m already looking forward to next year. Jump on the coach from Bristol and I’ll see you there.

This piece of independent journalism is supported by The Extra Mile and the Bristol24/7 public and business membership. 

All photos: Ursula Billington

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• Grove on sexuality, power and community
• Immersive light show coming to Bristol Cathedral
• The Best of Bristol: acts to watch at this year’s Forwards Festival

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