Sound Of Sirens

It’s about style, it’s about status and it’s about opportunities deriving out of a ‘consumer-oriented look at the next 12-18 months’:

“Eco-friendly goods and services sporting bold, iconic markers and design, helping their eco-conscious owners show off their eco-credentials to their peers.
At the heart of ECO-ICONIC is a status shift: Many consumers are eager to flaunt their green behavior and possessions, because there are now millions of other consumers who are actually impressed by green lifestyles.”

For those of you who are not familiar with this stuff: This is called a trend-briefing. Here you find the whole thing of may/june 08: www.trendwatching.com/briefing/ Have a look where we’re heading…

People working in this field are called Consumer-Ethnographers. And sometimes I get the feeling that they look at ‘consumers’ a bit like the old ethnographers were investigating ‘the brutes’ back then…quite similar notions and quite similar blindfolds sometimes… Interesting species, these ‘consumers’, aren’t they. And if investigated properly the knowledge of their behaviour will make you rich (first and foremost) and better than the others.

Doesn’t change much, the way of perceiving and thinking, does it. I figure, burned down to the basics, again you’re at growth, competition and expansion oriented folks, manipulating, instrumentalizing and exploiting people and nature. As eco and sustainable you call the development, as ‘eco-embedded’ it would ‘have to become’ - in my book there won’t be any sustainability as long as there is an ethnographer investigating a consumer in order to…

This is nowhere near an understanding of our interconnected nature with our surroundings. This is repeating the same patterns.

But check the trendwatching site - and see for yourself how you feel about this stuff…

Sustainable Dance Club (SDC) is a new project of creatives from Holland, which has no less ambitious goal than to redefine the world’s club culture. It all started in Rotterdam… but read for yourself!
The Interview was done with Esther De Jong, SDC press spokesman, in the end of february 2008.

Hi Esther!
Thank you for participating in a Sound Of Sirens interview and thanks a lot for your time in advance.
In the beginning, please tell us what Sustainable Dance Club is all about and who stands behind it!

Having fun and doing it in a sustainable way, that’s the vision of the Sustainable Dance Club. The Sustainable Dance Club is a creative concept of Rotterdam based organizations Enviu – Innovators in Sustainability and Döll – Atelier voor Bouwkunst. The idea focuses on integrating sustainable design, technologies and entrepreneurship in a club environment. The goal is to introduce sustainability to a large and
young audience by making it sexy and profitable. In 2006 the concept was developed and presented during a completely sold out sustainable club night called The Critical Mass in Rotterdam’s club Off Corso. Since then, SDC has been overwhelmed with questions for presentations and interviews. Their goal is to realize the first edition of SDC this year, and this is going to happen in Rotterdam’s club MyTown, opening in September 2008.

Opening in September 2008.

In 2004 the idea of a sustainable dance club came to life in Stef van Dongen’s mind, the founder of Enviu. In the beginning of 2005, Enviu involved Döll –atelier voor bouwkunst, to help them with the technical aspects of creating a sustainable dance club. In September 2006 a graduate student called Anouk Randag, started to develop an energy-generating dance floor. Besides the idea of the Sustainable Dance Club as a permanent sustainable dance club, in parallel an organically growing ‘toolbox’ was developed in February 2007. This toolbox contains innovative modules that address the central themes of sustainable clubbing. The toolbox is an open database where people are invited from all over the world to contribute their ideas and experiences and try out ideas and share their experiences with other ‘toolbox-users’ to create a worldwide sustainable dance club community.

Section of a sustainable Off_Corso by Döll

One month later, Michel Smit (of Cultural Development and former director of Off_Corso) is installed as project leader of the SDC Company. In May 2007 the city council has plans to rebuild club Nighttown, and SDC gets included in these plans. The club Nighttown is going to be called MyTown and will be the first Sustainable Dance Club in the world!

Besides the energy-generating dance floor, plans are to build an environmental-friendly bar, include trees4dance (calcualate and compensate your dance-footprint), flush the toilet with rainwater, create a relaxingroof and more. The final concept will be shown in MyTown in September.

Spreading a sustainable message.

But what’s so sustainable on a night-club?
OK, you’ve got the energy-producing dancefloor, the rainwater-toilets, the environmental-friendly bar and so on…
But isn’t a club the mother-of-all consumption temples? Isn’t reduction of consumption one of the main keys to a sustainable lifestyle?

Yes clubbing is one of the most consuming activities, but people will keep on doing it anyway (compare it with flying an airplane). The aim of SDC is to reduce the waste in the clubbing scene for 30% and make the youth become aware of sustainable activities. In this way you have 2 matters in one: you reduce the waste and try to make young people get more active with sustainability.

If they ask you directly, will SDC actually help people in making their lifestyle more sustainable, instead of “just” being a role-model and building up awareness?

This is an interesting question since I am researching that at the moment. I am a graduate student and Im trying to find ways to let the visiting people change their lives into a more sustainable way. We would like to make a difference and not only show them how it could be.

Running a nightclub isn’t an easily affordable business. Most of all clubs all over the world are being sponsored by major brands. Will you work with sponsors, and if yes - is there any kind of selection procedure? Or will you accept cash from everybody, because the main point is: Take the money and do good things with it, even if it comes from a questionable corporation?

I do not totally agree with the fact that running a nightclub isn’t an easy affordable business. Usually most of the clubs get there money out of the ticket and consuming income of the customers. In the case of Sustainable Dance Club we might use companies that support our goal (for example organic drinks or sustainable energy etc) and display their goods in the club. But again with the clubs, there isn’t a lot of sponsoring going on, probably more in the event business.

Isn’t that very optimistic?

Most of the clubs in Holland might get partial subsidies from the government otherwise, the pay it themselves or may corporate with big liqueur brands. In the case of a sustainable dance club, it has a big chance that the government steps in and we can cooperate with organic or sustainable brands like described down here. However, we will only work together with brands that support our goal and that are sustainable!

That sounds promising!
To what extent must the company’s policy/culture of the possible sponsor-partner be sustainable?
I.e. would SDC accept Pepsi, when they offer you Pepsi Raw?

Didn’t hear about Pepsi Raw until now! But it looks promising and it could be our sponsor for example. The same as we will be working with Gulpener which is the producer of organic beers. It’s hard to say how deeply sustainable a sponsor should be, as long as it is in the spirit of young, trendy and caring for the environment

But don’t you think Pepsi isn’t just greenwashing its other activities with that particular line-extension and that they try to ride the eco-trend-wave, too?

I guess you never know what a company’s intentions are, I don’t think you can say everybody is truly caring about the environment and not trying to gain an image or money out of it. Anyway I think it’s good when a company is doing something for ‘ sustainable’ people, from what intention they do it, is hard to say.

What if someone wants to open a SDC in another country? Would you support them and / or sell him them concept in a kind of franchise-way?And are there any plans to spread the sustainable message to other clubs, like a SDC-club-tour or something like that?

Garden of Delight at the Critical Mass party, october 2007 (photo: Frank Hanswijk)

Of course it is great if other people are having the same idea of being sustainable, but it would depend on the kind of company and their ideas about it I guess. I can’t give you a concrete answer about that now, we would have to see at the moment, but I don’t exclude franchising. There are in fact plans to spread the sustainable message and make a sort of SDC club on tour. Our ultimate goal is to make every club in the world sustainable, but of course at the moment we are still building on the first so we have to take one step at a time and first make sure all the attributes are finished.

Green Culture in Holland.

Nice dream! :) But maybe one day we’ll see a sustainable club-world like that, because it seems to be the only option in a world of such critical energy and resources descent.
Let’s talk a little bit about the dutch sustainable culture in general! How much are people aware of the situation and would you say that there are kind of green and responsible vibes to be felt inside the society?

I think there is a big awareness for sustainability in the Dutch culture at the moment. For example Rotterdam is trying to be the greenest city in Holland so there is a lot going on in this area. Of course it is one thing to say that you care about the environment and actually doing something about it. This is what SDC wants to achieve, also for clubbing youth. Besides that, it could be that sustainability is a trend right now, so this is a good time to focus on it before the attention starts to drop.

Well said!
We wish you a very nice opening and an even more successfull future!
What kind of music and style will us expect?
And at last - will you spill the beans for our readers about the club-opening schedule?
(Secrets are sooo exciting…)

The clubs we will work with can decide on their own what kind of music they want to play, for the first club in Rotterdam it is going to be a mixture of dance music & club nights, band performances and an open stage for creative young people. The assumption is that MyTown will open in the beginning of September, it can change depending on the progress of the club and its assets.

Thank you for your time and maybe we’ll see us in september at MyTown!

Projection of the gas meter shown at the Critical Mass party (photo:Frank Hanswijk)

Check out Sustainable Dance Club online for further information!

See also Trees for Dance (unfortunatly only in dutch)
“Trees for Dance gives clubs and festivals the opportunity to calculate the amount CO2 they (will most likely) produce. Also individual clubbers are able to measure their CO2 footprint of an all-night-long clubbin’ night. Trees for Dance offers everyone including big festivals the opportunity to compensate for the CO2 consumption by planting trees.”

‘An exploration of craft, design and the aesthetics of sustainability‘… das ist das Thema einer kleinen Veranstaltung gestern Abend im Bogan Haus, Totnes. Diavortrag von Toni Spencer, Schumacher College und Mitbegründerin von Sustainable Makers, einem Zusammenschluss von lokalen Handwerkern und Kunsthandwerkern im Rahmen der Transition Towns Bewegung. Anschliessend läd sie dazu ein, Erfahrungen auszutauschen und Fragen zu stellen. Im Thema selbst und in der Art wie ‘das Publikum’ reagiert, erzählt und diskutiert liegt eine Selbstverständlichkeit, die wir nicht gewohnt sind. Diskutiert wird nicht darüber, ob und warum wir unseren Lebensstil und unser Bewusstsein ändern müssen, sondern darüber, wie wir das tun können, welche Möglichkeiten es gibt, welche Ideen und Visionen, welche vorhandenen Infrastukturen, welche erst noch gedacht und erschaffen werden müssen und darüber, wo Hindernisse und Herausforderungen im bestehenden Bewusstsein, Verhalten und Gesellschaftssystem liegen.

Das alles unter dem Aspekt von einem kreativen Umgang mit den Konsequenzen von Peakoil, Climate Change & Co., und einem künstlerisch-ästhetischen Anspruch an Design. Ein interessanter, schöner und wichtiger Trend an britischen Kunsthochschulen: es geht immer mehr darum, selber in die Erfahrung des Machens zu gehen und anderen Erfahrungen zu ermöglichen, das Produkt ist nicht mehr Fokus der Ausbildung und des Designs! Auch wandelt sich die Bedeutung von dem, was Design ist und leisten kann: inzwischen wird der Prozess designed und nicht das Produkt, soziale und umweltpolitische Vorgänge und Zusammenhänge sind Thema, nicht nur rein ästhetisch-künstlerische….Spannend.