Birmingham Light Festival Sustainability Policy
About
Birmingham Light Festival is a new, annual festival, aiming to brighten up the dark winter nights each February
Birmingham Light Festival (BLF) will transform a series of city centre locations into a spectacular gallery of illuminated artworks, in what will become an annual multi-day event. Encouraging Birmingham residents and visitors to explore and see the city in a different light, installations and artworks will bring the post-Christmas winter nights to life.
For 2025, 3 of the illuminated artworks will even remain in place after the festival, as organisers commit to brightening city spaces more permanently over time. The Festival will also be brought to life with an accompanying programme of events and offers.
BLF is a City Curator Project, a role fully funded by Colmore BID. It is being made possible with thanks to the full support of all five city-centre BIDs. Outdoor Places Unusual Spaces are the producers of BLF and are also responsible for all elements of event and production management.
The Context
We recognise that events can have a large impact on the environment at a local, regional and global level. We are committed to find the greenest and kindest way to stage light installations of quality whilst minimising the impact on the environment.
As organisers of a new event, we are committed to continuing to learn, to change and to improve.
Local First - Supply Chain
Birmingham Light Festival is an event that has been developed by Birmingham people for Birmingham people, and our work is rooted in a desire to see the city thrive.
We work with a local supply chain, from fencing and security to designers and our PR agency. This allows us to minimise travel, shipping and to support local businesses. This ethos includes the appointment of our producers, OPUS, who are also based in Birmingham, and have extensive knowledge and experience of working sustainably in our city centre spaces.
Travel & Freight
Visitor Travel
A key pillar of BLF is that all artworks are in walking distance of one another, showcasing Birmingham as a walkable city and encouraging visitors to actively explore the city centre on foot. One of our ambitions is that BLF will help to break down some of the misconceptions of distance between different parts of the city centre. We hope the festival will help people to discover how walkable the city really is, and thus to continue to choose active travel beyond the event itself.
Our choice of locations also mean that ample public transport options available. Our website signposts people to bus, train, bike and e-scooter transport options. We will also use social media to encourage people to use green and active travel.
Our evaluation survey will include a question about visitor mode of travel, so we can learn how people have chosen to travel and can use this data to inform our 2026 plans and communications.
Team Travel
We are reducing onsite visits with teams whenever it is sensible to do so, choosing instead to meet remotely. Where the team does have to meet in person, we ask the team to travel by public or active transport modes where possible.
Freight
By nature of touring international renowned artworks there is some requirement for freight and international travel. However we are prioritising installations already in the UK, whenever possible, to reduce freight and international travel.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Through all our work we will follow the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ ethos. Our first consideration is always how we can use less resources.
Where a purchase is required or an item is made new, we consider how they can be reused in future. Both exclusively for Birmingham Light Festival and also through OPUS’ wider production work. For anything that unavoidably cannot be reused we recycle wherever possible.
REDUCE
REUSE
RECYCLE
Energy
The Artworks programmed have been designed to have a low power draw, and artists have all been required to submit information on how much power each installation uses.
We will look to use land power first and foremost. If required we will use portable battery powered generators or generators that are run on Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil, a renewable fuel that can be used as a replacement for fossil fuels like diesel and kerosene.
In future, our ambition is to programme a mix of installations including ones which use recycled materials, alternatively powered (e.g. wind or bike powered), or which require no power and reflect natural or pre-existing ambient lighting. Additionally we are committed to presenting light art with environmental messages to promote conversation messages and awareness amongst visitors.
External Traders
There are no catering traders engaged for Birmingham Light Festival - this helps us to encourage visitors to eat and drink in the city’s bars and restaurants whilst also reducing waste being created.
We are not selling any light up toys, or branded plastic led items, nor are we engaging any external traders to sell merchandise. Instead we encourage families to bring already owned light up items with them for their children to enjoy, rather than purchase new, or single use items that often end up in landfill.
Production Models
Across all elements of our event design, we will consider the impact of our choices and look to choose the greenest route at all times. OPUS apply Julie’s Bicycle toolkits across all phases of event design. In addition to everything we have outlined above, some of the key additional actions we are taking are:
Where possible, BLF will use existing infrastructure (buildings, offices etc) for storage and back of house space rather than spending resources on building compounds.
The majority of our marketing is digital but where we use printed media we are opting for sustainably sourced materials. Our festival signage will be recyclable if not reusable in future.
There will be no single use scrim or barrier jackets used on fencing at the festival. Across sites, we will strive to eliminate single use consumables and explore reusable or recyclable options.
Training and Knowledge Sharing
The Birmingham Light Festival core team will complete the Future Festival event sustainability e-learning course to support our collective continued development in this space. This will include our student placements to ensure those coming into the sector develop this knowledge.
Festival volunteer briefings will also include a section on sustainability at events.
Festival suppliers will also relieve a handbook which links to this policy.