www.specialevents.com: Organizing an event involves coordinating numerous details, managing logistics, and addressing emotional elements that can often come with hosting special occasions. On top of this, for professionals and their clients who value sustainability and social responsibility, it becomes a mission to make the event not just successful, but ethical too.
4 comments:
This article is a very important consideration for the entertainment industry as a whole, and it is an issue I grapple with frequently when thinking about my future. Every person can say that they strive to be ethical, and that they want their work, and the people they choose to work with, to reflect that. However, it is often difficult to put those wants into actions, especially when entering the industry, when working as a contractor, or when working with limited resources. It is something I especially struggle with given that my intended career path takes me through one of the most (famously) unethical parts of the entertainment industry, sports entertainment. It is important for us as individuals to take stock of the values that we have and the way that we display them in our professional lives. Not just what we believe our values are, but what we actually spend our time and resources on. The advice given in the article is good, especially if you are hosting an event or in a position to make decisions on who a production works with, but I need to do more research on what ethical practices look like when you are contracted on a project.
I think partnering with ethical vendors for larger events will help as a society iif more money and work can flow to ethical vendors. With higher wages for the workers and a better work balance for those workers will benefit all in the entertainment industry. The more thought about the impact of huge events with the environment and offsetting or eliminating the waste or other impacts we help prepare ourselves for a better future (hopefully not plagued by environmental catastrophe). With bigger or special events outputting more waste it is important to try and offset these wastes. The ability to also project your image and company’s values to your vendors and how you look to your clients or attendees is also a very powerful aspect that should be considered.
My parents weren’t big on hosting events when I was growing up. The only events we would host were birthday parties, and those ended when I was 14. The main experience I’ve had with event planning that required several moving parts was my high school graduation party. We coordinated with a local restaurant for catering, and with the bakery that we ordered cakes from. All in all, it wasn’t a very complicated or large operation, but it did make understanding the concerns expressed in the article easier. For a larger scale event or production with a sizable impact, sustainability and ethicality are definitely important aspects to pay close attention to. I am very relieved that this is something that is being talked about, because the trash and non compostable material alone from a large event would have a monumental impact on the environment. I do want to add that it is important to be aware of the legitimacy of ethical claims, because greenwashing has become a common occurrence, especially in larger corporations and companies.
Ethical vendors in theater has been a topic I’ve recently been thinking about, especially considering the limitations that theater work has and how these limitations affect our capacity to work solely with ethical vendors. Particularly, being able to access ethical vendors can be difficult (location differences, shipping restraints, etc.), and theater budgets tend to be low, which drives us to the most economical option rather than that which would be most sustainable or ethical. From this, I’m curious as to how current theaters driven by sustainability are working around these problems to become more ethical practices, especially considering that not only do these kinds of decisions affect how technicians are able to do their work, but also how this affects the costs of materials and labor from a designers perspective, potentially limiting or changing some more effective methods than others for them. I believe that is a larger issue within theater at the moment as it relates to becoming an even more ethical practice and business due to the logistical and economic constraints we are often placed under.
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