To move towards more sustainable businesses, alternative products, practices and systems are needed. As temporary mini societies, festivals and similar temporary events are the perfect playground to experiment with these alternatives. They offer a real-life context with similarities to the real world in a rather safe, fun and laid-back atmosphere, where people can experiment with sustainable innovations.

In this webinar, NHL Stenden presented an approach that may provide sustainable innovators, start-ups, incubators, researchers, students, government representatives, festival organisers and all other innovators that want to contribute to sustainable innovation, insight into how a festival can be used as a place to experiment with sustainable ideas and innovations. 

The webinar is not focussed on the question of making a festival itself more sustainable, but instead it will discuss how festivals can be used as a means for sustainable innovation. The webinar will discuss why festivals are interesting places for experimentation and why universities may be further interested in organising festivals. Also, it will present a practical approach that may help entrepreneurs to define the scope of their experiments and design their actual festival experiment. During the webinar, several inspiring experiences will be presented, from a broad range of different European festivals. In the webinar, we will discuss the relationship between the festival approach and the HEInnovate tool that has been developed the European Commission in partnership with the OECD. With regards to the eight dimensions of the HEInnovate tool, the festival approach is specifically related to following three dimensions: Entrepreneurial Teaching and Learning, Preparing and Supporting Entrepreneurs, Knowledge Exchange and Collaboration.

Webinar Presentation