One year in...

One year ago today, I was on an Ultra Music Festival production walk-through at Bayfront Park when rumors of us not even having a show to produce started to whirl. I had just high fived my Eco Village team as we finished our final planning meeting. I had a semi-truck of waste management gear on the way for load-in. I had people about to board planes to come work with me. I had my interns running errands and rushing projects to completion. I was ready to pull yet another all-nighter in the office.

… and then suddenly, STOP. Stop working. Stop the truck. Stop the running. STOP IT ALL.

The next few days felt like the twilight zone as my whole world came to a crashing halt. I had been working 18-hour days for weeks by then. The pressure had been building for months. A year in the making, my second edition of Ultra leading the Mission: Home sustainability program was just 3 weeks away. I was exhausted and yet, I was still so fired up to be working on the festival that I had grown up counting down the days to attend… and for my role to be helping them take better care of the planet, nonetheless. 

… but the unthinkable happened. That virus we’d been brushing off as unthreatening had finally reached our city. As the first few confirmed cases came in, I came out of the work hole I had been in for weeks to read up on the news. It was real… and we really were getting shut down.

The weeks after that were an emotional rollercoaster as I saw my beloved industry come crashing down. Festivals cancelled, then smaller events, then clubs and bars… it was a disaster that many didn’t survive and others will take years to recover from. Full transparency, I drowned my emotions in beer for a time… Corona actually, to add a bit of dark humor to these unbelievably dark times.

By the end of March, we lived through what would have been Miami Music Week in full lock down. We made it as fun as we could, as it would be the first one we didn’t work in years… but there was an air of fear and uncertainty looming. We had stopped hugging each other. We were worried for our families. Every project for the next few months had been cancelled and I was pretty certain I’d be losing my job at Ultra sooner than later. That call came the following week and of course, I fully understood. Hey… at least we had succeeded at having the least environmentally impactful year in the festival’s history, right?

After the initial shock (and a few more Coronas) something surprising happened. I started to feel an incredible sense of relief.

So, wait… You’re telling me I get my life back? You’re telling me I get a do-over? I get to reinvent what my future looks like? Unexpectedly, despite being locked in my house, I felt unbelievably liberated.

I dusted off a project I had dreamed up a while back… one I ambitiously expected to complete on the sidelines of working at Ultra, which would have been incredibly difficult. I might never again have this much time to focus on Ascendance’s Elevating Event Sustainability guide. It was a free beginner’s guide that I wanted to put out into the world because I strongly believed everyone should have access to this information, whether they could hire us to help them put it in practice or not.

… and so we did it. I sobered up, called in my favorite people to work with and released it on Earth Day 2020 as our “gift to the planet”. What happened next blew my mind.

Despite the fact that we had no idea when events would come back, the world wanted this guide. They wanted to know how we could bring the events industry back in a way that was better for the planet, whenever that may be.

It quickly became hard to keep track of all the interviews, press features, emails and calls, so I thought that today’s anniversary was a perfect time to celebrate some of my favorites and send my gratitude out to all of the people and organizations who found it important to share the guide with their worlds.

First, a huge thank you to Kat Bein who was the first to interview me about the guide on her Twitch show and encouraged us to have fun with it. We dressed up inspired by nature - her with a Fall in Japan flair and me with the Tropical Miami vibes. We chatted for a while about the inspiration behind Ascendance and the guide before she went on to her next guest, the amazing music producer and DJ, Justin Jay! Here’s an excerpt from my story:

“I’ve been a fan of the music festival scene for as long as I can remember, but after a while it started to not feel good to be out there dancing and having a good time but kicking around cups and trash everywhere, feeling like there was so much impact from something I was participating in… after a while I just couldn’t do it anymore, so I decided to do something about it.”

A few weeks later, I was invited to speak about Ultra’s successful 2019 sustainability program, Ascendance’s work and the guide on the Abracadabra TV Virtual Festival. One of my favorite organization’s dedicated to eradicating plastic from the music industry - Bye Bye Plastic, hosted a panel called “Miami’s Sustainable Party Fairies” that also included the amazing founders of Elektrik Fantasy Festival and Lemon City Studios. The focus on Miami here was not just for fun. My hometown is considered the most vulnerable coastal city in the world to the impacts of climate change. The panel highlighted that action towards sustainability here is not optional, it’s necessary.

The following month, another favorite organization - Debris Free Oceans, interviewed me for their “Party with a Purpose” series. Maddie and I decided to take the fun to the next level on this one and come in full festival gear, wigs and beer included. To our surprise, Miami New Times picked this interview as one of their “13 best things to do in Miami” that week… and that it was!

Finally, towards the end of this “virtual book tour” of sorts, my friends over at Orca Sound Project interviewed me on their IG Live to continue the conversation. We talked not only about the guide but about how it empowers everyone to participate in event sustainability by using it to encourage their favorite events to come back in a green way. We also discussed cost reducing and revenue generating sustainability initiatives that can help events save and make money during these tough times.

Artwork by Yuko Kondo

These were just a few of the many people and organizations who used their platforms to share our message. As I look back on what was the most insane year of my career, I’m eternally grateful to everyone below who took the time to feature us, prioritized this message and continued your hard work in this space, regardless of the fact that the world felt like it was crumbling down around us.

A Greener Festival, TEDxMiami, Apple News, NewsBreak, She Said So, Rakastella, Magnetic Magazine, Culture Crusaders, Sustainable Events Alliance, R.Cup, Florida Festivals & Events Association, Florida International University Institute of Environment, Sustainable Events Network of Florida and Caribbean, EDM.com, EDMIdentity, EDMTunes, Mix24.7 EDM, Nocturnal Times, Grit Daily, Voyage MIA, Respect My Region, Lean Orb, VolunteerCleanup.org, Do What You Can for the People, Attainable, Astrapto Academy, The Hive Vibration, J Sloane Creative, When Life Hands You Lennons, Conscious Electronic, The Festival Guy, Ash the Magical, NapGirls and every last person who subscribed to our email list and forwarded the guide to your contacts.

Over the past year, Ascendance has received well over 35 features via virtual interviews, panels, workshops, editorials and speaking opportunities. I couldn’t be more proud of us all for keeping this conversation going when there was no end in sight to the industry’s biggest nightmare.

It’s no coincidence that exactly a year later, we’ve finally been given a light at the end of this tunnel with the news of vaccinations planned for wide distribution this Spring. My hope is that events took this time to breathe and realize that they have a special ability to turn their negative impacts into positive ones… and that they use that super power for good on their return.

Here at Ascendance, we are excited to share that our work continues beyond the events world with the launch of Ascendance Sustainability Group. While events will always be our favorite, we know our impact can grow far beyond event gates. ASG is here to take our talents to commercial and municipal projects, helping businesses and even entire cities to go green. We can’t wait to tell you more.

- Ascendance Founder, Vivian Belzaguy