FACE YOUR ELEPHANT; ENGAGING FESTIVAL GOERS IN THE SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING OF REDUCING THEIR CARBON FOOTPRINT

The project will engage festival goers in the science and engineering of how they can reduce their own carbon footprint. It will do this in an environment where people are enjoying themselves, that is, at music festivals. It will work with festival organisers, event managers and science communicators using peer education, interactive displays and hand held devices to communicate the underlying science and engineering of measures to reduce personal carbon emissions. The Face Your Elephant peer education facility was devised by young people as part of the C-Change project http://www.switchonswitchoff.org/. The typical emissions of someone in the UK is equivalent to two elephants. The challenge is to reduce this value to one baby elephant - hence the title. It consists of display material and practical interactive exhibitions that engage people in actions that they can take to reduce their carbon footprint. This facility will be expanded to increase the amount of science and engineering via updated displays, hand held devices and the involvement of researchers, PhD students and Science and Engineering Ambassadors. A carbon calculator, running on hand held devices will be used to help people measure their personal carbon footprint. The key part of the exhibition is a dialogue between festival goers and the Peer Educators about energy in the home and a future low carbon economy. The hand held devices will provide audio, text, images and video to help explain the science and engineering. They will also be used to collect questionnaire and carbon footprint data, so gathering information on their knowledge, attitudes and behaviour. This proposal would update the material; develop related text, video, images for display on the hand held devices and train the peer educators. The approach will be piloted in 2009 and then used at mainstream music festivals in 2010.