The Adelaide Festival is held annually in and around Adelaide over 3 weeks. It features around 500 performances across 20 venues, which attract over 74,000 ticketed attendances, generating over $77 million dollars of economic activity.
An event of this size comes at a cost in relation to resource usage, waste management and greenhouse gas emissions.
In 2020, the Adelaide Festival is to be one of the first major festivals in Australia to become certified carbon neutral under the Climate Active EVENT standard.
Capturing, managing and analysing data for all aspects either directly or outside of the Adelaide Festival’s control to achieve Climate Active EVENT certification is no small task – particularly if you’re relying on key personnel and spreadsheets across multiple stakeholders and venues. By using Trellis, The Adelaide Festival is streamlining its data capture and reporting and increased the audit ability and accuracy of energy and sustainability reporting, saving thousands of dollars each year on internal administration alone.
The Adelaide Festival has produced the following video in which Artistic Director Rachel Healy joins Trellis’s Matthew Shorten to explain the carbon accountancy and certification process.
“The adoption of Trellis is a logical progression in managing such a complex data set,” says Rob Brookman, Director of the Adelaide Festival.
The platform allows the Adelaide Festival to track its energy and water consumption, waste and recycling, business travel and other resources and activities in an engaging and innovative way.
“Trellis’s focus on data extraction from actual invoices means we have a full history and access to the bills in the system, as well as the many levels of customisable and automated reporting around our consumption and spend,” says Rob. “The process so far has really increased collaboration between business areas with the ultimate outcome of Climate Active EVENT certification significant and exciting” for such an important event.
According to Brookman, the biggest benefit of Trellis is that it allows the Adelaide Festival to look beyond data management and reporting to focus on more strategic areas re-deploying staff to more valuable things in the process. This includes strategies to reduce print, minimise travel where possible, venue bench-marking and detailed exception reporting considering cost and consumption.
“The Trellis team is working closely with us on this journey, providing advice and flexibility in achieving Climate Active EVENT certification,” says Brookman. “We have been really encouraged by the partnership approach and enabling easy and fast configuration to our needs as a dynamic, complex and expanding operation.”
