About
European festivals forest
Music, theatre and arts festivals across Europe are working in concert to plant a new Festivals Forest in Iceland with Downy birch, Sitka spruce, Lodgepole pine, Black Cottonwood and Siberian larch. We will plant 2,500 trees per hectare, with seedlings incubated locally.
The Festivals Forest is a carbon sequestration project. It celebrates the power and creativity of the festivals industry coming together to lead a progressive call to climate action. Working with Land og Skógur, the Icelandic forest service, gives us the best value climate action imaginable and a confident and shared path to Net Zero.
This is a long-term project intended to run for centuries. 2022 was our pilot year in which the audiences of six festivals – STROOM (BE), Walden Festival (BE), ReMusica (XK), Schiermonnikoog Festival (NL), Festivaletteratura Mantova (IT) and Wonderfeel (NL) – together donated a hectare of trees. Please read our story of the planting at Tumastaðir in the news page.
In 2023, we grew to fourteen festivals plus three touring companies, which together will plant over two hectares next spring.
Please join us in 2024!
€2 per Tree
As we all work together towards Net Zero, festival organisations and audiences are funding the afforestation with a progressive Carbon Coin donation of €2 per tree, and the option of carbon-offset donation for artists and visitors’ travel, which comprises around 75% of each festival’s carbon footprint.