Presente sostenibile
Download the guide to be an ecoresponsible festivalgoer!
Presente Sostenibile was launched in 2012, based on an idea by Chiara Mini, as a project dedicated to reducing the ecological footprint of Santarcangelo Festival and the activities of Santarcangelo dei Teatri association.
Festivals are exceptional spaces for encounter and exchange. They involve travel, energy consumption, supply chains, the production of materials, technical and artistic work, engagement with audiences, the use of urban and/or natural spaces, communication and the creation of visions. They are complex devices with a unique potential to shape behaviour, raise awareness, create temporary communities and experiment with practices that can then spread beyond the boundaries of the event itself. For this reason, sustainability cannot be treated as a secondary issue or as a set of measures to be added at the end: it concerns the very way in which a cultural event is conceived, produced and experienced.
‘Presente Sostenibile’ starts from this point. Every organisational, production or curatorial decision entails material conditions; questioning these conditions does not mean limiting artistic freedom, but making it more conscious and responsible. It means asking what impacts a decision generates, what alternatives are possible, and what can be reduced, reused, shared or rethought without diminishing the Festival’s meaning. The ecological transition of an event does not coincide with a single best practice, but with a gradual transformation of organisational habits. It often hinges on principles that seem obvious and trivial (reducing waste, minimising consumption, reusing what already exists,…), which only become effective when they are incorporated into the operational details of a complex system.
Presente Sostenibile works in four main areas: sustainable mobility, clean energy, reduce-reuse-recycle, and conscious procurement.
