“It is not the strongest species that survives, nor the most intelligent but the one most responsive to change.”
Charles Darwin.

“Sting is doing his thing, but all you as citizens are consumers and you have choices. You can put pressure on by choices you make. What you buy and what you refuse to buy send messages to those who are manufacturing and using the wrong technology when there is green technology available.”
Kofi Annan, during a G8 Summit / Live 8 Concert Television Debate.

These words addressed by the Secretary General of the United Nations to a wide television audience truly point us in the direction of the most realistic solution to the environmental challenges posed by the alarming advent of climate change. A consideration of consumer culture in the light of a higher cultural context can help encourage our species to strengthen its survival instinct and adapt, with intelligence, to the use of greener technologies. The idea of a direct relationship between choice and the environment is in no way new. The following analogy will strengthen the view that Kofi Annan was indeed giving very accurate directions to our present generation for the way back to the garden of archetype!
It is telling that the allegory of the Book of Nature (proposed merely as an example culled from the history of ideas of when the nature of human choice impacts directly on the environment), which was developed by the first followers of the Patron Saint of Ecology (& Peace) St Francis of Assisi, considers the moment when the harmonious communication between Adam, symbol of Everyman, and Nature, of which he was trusted custodian, became tainted by the ignorant dynamics of selfish choice. The immediate consequence was exile from Eden and the subsequent degeneration of the natural world. To reverse the process and restore a harmonious communication between every man and nature, the making of less environmentally-selfish consumer choices needs to be promoted so as to reduce society’s environmental footprint. Concerts are a familiar way of raising awareness, however, Powerstock Festival, with the participation of Unesco - International Hydrological Program (IHP), intends to be an annual event in order to sustain its efforts to promote the principles of sustainable development. As the outline of the event’s concept will explain, it is in the context of the key principle of interdependence, as harnessed by consumer choice, that Powerstock offers itself as an up-dated heir to the festival of legend Woodstock, hence the festival’s payoff ‘choose well’.

Powerstock Festival (scheduled to be held in the summer of 2007 in the suggestive location of a wind-farm) intends to become the first mainstream summer music event aimed at sensitizing festival-goers to the principles of sustainable development, with special attention on renewable energies and water.

To this end, therefore, the suggestive semantics of the festival’s name, supported, as it is, by the equally suggestive semiotics of its logo make Powerstock, quite literally, a modern and assertive statement written, for extra clarity, in black and white that invites festival-goers to concentrate their minds on the most pressing concerns of our time. To this end, Powerstock alludes to the environmentally damaging nature as well as limited and unstable supply of traditional stocks of power, the need to develop greener technologies that can provide alternative and renewable stocks of cleaner power. Importantly, the meaning of Powerstock will be extended to sensitise festival-goers to the most pressing issue of all: the world’s depleting supplies of fresh water which, as first principle of life, is literally the stock that gives us the power of life. By placing special emphasis on Unesco’s vision of fresh water as the ultimate symbol of interdependence, Powerstock intends to be instrumental in improving the twenty-first century’s chances of being a century of ‘water peace’ rather than one of ‘water wars’. In this visionary respect, Powerstock aims, intentionally, at revising more than reviving the will for peace that characterised the Woodstock generation. Rather than being a mere Woodstock imitation, therefore, Powerstock’s vision is to assert itself as a contemporary and up-dated heir to the festival of legend.

The spirit of interdependence will be everywhere present since the theme of water will provide the subject-matter for much of the visual arts and V-J imagery in such a way as to encourage festival-goers to share in the Powerstock Experience. Via the availability of pamphlets at a special Unesco IHP stand, documentaries and visual art, festival-goers will be constantly sensitized to the issue of fresh water which is the most fundamental concern of sustainable development. All those who attend Powerstock will understand that energy and fresh water are precious commodities and that the proof of their value lies in the fact that the stability of our future depends on our efficient consumption of them. The various communications initiatives are therefore, quite literally, geared at providing an elemental education to all who participate in the Powerstock Experience whose meaningful fusion of music aims at placing special attention on the concerns of renewable energies and water.

The fact that the electricity required for the performance of the electronic music, associated as it always has been throughout its century-long history to the idea of the future, will be produced by biodiesel-fueled generators should help festival-goers make the association that there is a real need to seek such sustainable ways of performing it if it is to continue to be representative, in future, of the future that is currently being envisaged. The universal language of music is expected to lend itself well to the strategy of communicating an ecological message of equally universal appeal by literally plugging the issue of sustainability directly into an emerging current of mainstream consciousness in such a way as to amplify consumer awareness by means of an annual popular event that reaches the developed world through loud speakers.

In a deliberate counterpoint to this, a selection of soft acoustic arrangements from Mali, exploring the theme of water, will be scheduled as afternoon sessions (staged on intimate podiums designed by a bio-architect) that are expected to contribute a sense of magic to the event, capable of striking a chord in the imaginations of festival-goers and stimulating them to reverse their psychology and shift the focus of their attention from unhelpful and unhealthy clichés of a needy Africa and tune-in instead to the idea that African culture is in fact invested with a considerable immaterial wealth (whose primary treasure, in the context of the Powerstock Experience, is its respectful relationship to the first principle of life) that must be valued according to its potential to help westerners reflect on the relative poverty of a culture of waste.

Interdependence is at the core of Powerstock’s intention to up-date the spirit of revolution that characterised the Woodstock generation. If the next revolution is set to be ‘green’ then its success will surely best be determined by the stimulation of an attitude of ‘eco-firendliness’ in consumer consciousness. It is a reality of the world in which we live that revolution will be far less about dramatic protest than it will be about conscious choice. The suggestive semantics of Powerstock brings meaning to the festival’s sponsorship strategy which aims at sensitising festival-goers, as consumers, to the availability of the commercial stock that literally gives them the power to buy into the ‘green’ values of the current Industrial Revolution. Key among these green values is the concept of interdependence which is why selected sponsors from a variety of industries, central to daily living, will be invited to participate, together, in the Powerstock Experience. Owing to the special emphasis on interdependence, the Powerstock Experience is about promoting co-evolution rather than revolution. We at Powerstock hope to foster the awareness, casually and almost by osmosis, that each individual has the very real ability to alter the orientation of commercial markets not irresponsibly and overnight, but responsibly and over time in order to help meet the challenges of a changing world.

In short, stimulating ordinary consumer awareness in innovative ways is the running theme of the open air live-music event that is Powerstock. Such an objective is at the very heart of the Powerstock pay-off ‘choose well’.