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Sustainability
Our Sustainable Ethos
At West Cork Music, we are committed to becoming a more sustainable festival organisation, reducing the impact of our work on the environment, while maintaining high standards of artistic excellence and a world-class festival atmosphere.
The production of three international festivals and year-round concerts in a remote location creates sustainability challenges, as audiences and artists have to travel to reach us. We work in practical ways to minimise our carbon footprint. We also work imaginatively – through our programming – to raise awareness about the importance of climate action among our staff, volunteers, and audiences.
Our first Environmental and Sustainability Policy in 2021 identified measurable ways we could reduce waste and emissions, and address barriers and opportunities specific to our rural location and mission. We update and report on the policy each year to identify strategies for improvement.
Facts & Figures
We carefully monitor West Cork Music’s carbon footprint and take practical and measurable steps to reduce it year on year, in line with our action plan. We are continually striving to address infrastructure challenges and strike the right balance between artist welfare, artistic integrity, and cutting emissions, and we are already seeing genuine progress.
- Artist transport emissions fell from 47,500kg to 35,700kg of CO2 between 2019 and 2023.
- We changed to green energy providers in the Box Office and the CEO’s Office.
- Brochure print runs were reduced by 25% for the West Cork Literary Festival in 2026.
Our Sustainability Goals
Our goals reach across areas including waste reduction, day-to-day activities, festival management, and travel emissions.
Reduce Transport Emissions – Travel to our remote location is our largest source of carbon emissions, and we have made chnage to changes we made to our contract terms and festival practices to monitor and reduce our impact.
Embed Sustainability in Everyday Decisions – We make sustainability a natural consideration in everything we do, and our actions to date have included using online meetings and switching to green energy providers. We consult our staff, measure our emissions across our activities, and continuously ask, “Is there a more sustainable way to do this?”
Keep the Conversation Going – Recognising that sustainability is a living commitment, we promote our Green Policy across our festivals and website, gather audience feedback on our environmental practices, and platform writers and artists who engage with climate issues.
Sustainability Report 2025
Our annual West Cork Music Sustainability report sets out our targets for improving sustainability, and explores the ways our artists and audiences are helping us to deliver on our aims. In 2026, our actions include reducing the size and scale of our print runs, while still working with local designers and printers.
Our West Cork Music Festivals
Join us, across six glorious weeks each summer, as West Cork Music celebrates the best of chamber music, literature, and traditional Irish music through its world-class festivals at the edge of Europe.
