The 15th edition of the Green Events & Innovations Conference (GEI), the foremost conference for sustainable events, was a sold-out success with over 350 delegates and an agenda with heavyweight speakers, innovators, and industry leaders in the global live music, sports, and event sector. I was pleased to be part of the event and its success, which took place on 28 February at the Royal Lancaster, London.

GEI was supported by Ecotricity and this year’s edition tackled the critical sustainability issues with a gender-balanced lineup of speakers who brought their knowledge, insight, and formidable passion to the panels and conversations.

The conference kicked off with the Adapting to a New Climate Panel and Boom Festival’s Artur Mendes boldly stating that “we won’t work with brands or policymakers who aren’t aligned with our values.”

While I moderated a double-bill session, where the first part focused on the Platinum Jubilee Pageant with its CEO Rosanna Manchando, looking at the sustainability actions and takeaways from organising this huge and iconic event. The second part was with carbon removal expert, Mark Stevenson from CUR8 highlighted some key facts in carbon offsets, saying that “Any new fossil fuel exploration is a gun held to humanity’s head.”

It was a powerful day of learning, and networking, jam-packed with inspiring insight and conversation.

The day ended in a special ‘in conversation’ session with Brian Eno and Jacob Collier, who explored ‘music as a social synchroniser’ which was the keynote. An enlightening conversation that saw Brian comment that “The arts are where we develop our instinct and our conscience,” and Jacob state that “things become possible as you start doing them.” We even got to sing with Jacob Collier, which created a moment at the conference.