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

We’ve been quiet for a minute. As our eyes were opened to the wide-spread racism that still exists in our country, we were (and still are) deeply disturbed at these harsh realities. It is the biggest sign of our privilege. While our team consists of women from multiple ethnicities, none of us are black and as such had not even begun to understand the struggles of our brothers and sisters of color. The truth is that we still don’t and never will, but we have started to listen in a way we never have before. At first, we chose to remain silent in order to leave space for the black community to speak their minds and educate us. Next, we began to amplify their voices through our instagram stories. Now, we feel the time has come for us to break our silence in order to continue this ever-so-important conversation.

Last month, I was invited to join the team of contributors at Magnetic Magazine. It was an exciting opportunity for me to write for the sustainability section of a long-established and respected dance music industry publication. I planned for my first piece to be an interview with Eli Goldstein, a well-known environmental activist and DJ within the dance music community. We would discuss his efforts with DJs 4 Climate Action, how the scene can help fight climate change and a new initiative Eli’s DJ Duo, Soul Clap is launching around voting. If it were anything like my usual writing, the piece would have been written through an entirely optimistic lens, with a lot of education and a sprinkle of inspiration. 

Lo and behold, the day our interview was scheduled for became #blackouttuesday, a day when there was absolutely ZERO room for optimism. It had become a day of reverence and reflection for the entire world to acknowledge the deep, dark issues present in our country. There was no way we could talk about anything else. It was challenging for me to even have the conversation. It was even more difficult for me to write the piece. I fought with my tendency to state things in a positive light, I edited over and over… and now it’s finally here. 

The finished piece contains the full video of my interview with Eli, key takeaways, loads of links to carefully selected resources, and details on how you can help. This might be the most important piece I’ve ever written. I invite you to read it and keep this conversation going with me and everyone else in your world until we see real change in this country. 

Moving forward, we might be reverting to more of our “regularly scheduled programming”, but you have my word that we will not close our eyes to what has been revealed to us. These issues will remain present in our hearts, minds, and most importantly, our actions. We are committed to continue amplifying black voices, developing ourselves as allies to the black community and finding ways to participate in the movement every way we know how. We hope you will join us. 

-Ascendance Founder, Vivian Belzaguy

Truly blown away by how well received our “Elevating Event Sustainability Guide” has been. It’s only been 1 month since the big release as our gift to the planet for Earth Day and we’ve already received 14 features ranging from music and sustainability industry publications to mainstream media. So grateful for these shares, write ups, interviews and overall kind words. You’ve shown us that all of the hard work was worth it and now really was the perfect time. Thank you!

NEWS ARTICLE LINKS

https://www.magneticmag.com/2020/05/new-guide-how-make-events-greener-sustainable/

https://edm.com/news/ascendance-sustainable-events-elevating-event-sustainability-guide

https://edmidentity.com/2020/04/23/postponed-festivals-ascendance-sustainable-events/

https://www.newsbreak.com/n/0P0B5Fmf?s=influencer

https://gritdaily.com/ascendance-sustainability-events/

http://www.thenocturnaltimes.com/ascendance-sustainable-events-shares-strategies-on-how-postponed-events-can-increase-sustainability/

http://voyagemia.com/interview/meet-ascendance-sustainable-events-mimo/

https://www.edmtunes.com/2020/04/how-music-festivals-can-come-back-sustainably/

https://www.respectmyregion.com/ascendance-sustainable-events/

https://mix247edm.com/how-green-are-your-events-elevating-sustainable-events/

https://consciouselectronic.com/2020/04/26/promo-spotlight-ascendance-sustainable-events-celebrates-earth-day-2020/

PODCASTS

When Life Hands You Lennons: https://lennoncihak.com/podcast/vivian-belzaguy

Do What You Can For The People: https://youtu.be/DwesV0M3h4k

Kat Calls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG-RMmoVTpY

OUR GIFT TO THE PLANET HAS ARRIVED!

I started dreaming up this guide almost exactly one year ago when I asked myself, “why is it that the events industry as a whole is still playing catch up on the whole sustainability trend?”… I concluded that one of the main reasons is a general lack of resources and knowledge about sustainable best practices among event organizers. I think this creates some level of intimidation, especially for large events who are watched closely and need to get things right before they open gates to thousands of people. 

So, just like that, the idea for the Event Sustainability Guide was born. It would give event organizers a download of all the basics for getting started and it would do so in a way that was relatable and digestible for events with no experience. Sounds easy enough, right? 

Well we’ve come a long way since then and it only took a community grant, a lock-down, a dream team, and the 50th anniversary of Earth Day to finally bring this baby to life! I hope you’ll agree that the finished product is all of the things we dreamed up and more! I am blown away by the ideas that have come together from our team and the gorgeous presentation!

SPEAKING OF DREAM TEAM, bare with me while a shout out the AMAZING WOMEN behind this guide.

I must give special thanks first and foremost to my incredible friend and Sustainability Strategist, Nicole Pamani, without whom this guide would still be floating around in my head and I’d definitely be a little less sane. You have been my rock in getting this together. I’m eternally grateful.

Secondly, I have to thank my amazing coach, Aurora Dawn Benton, who gave us the push we needed to go from a great guide to an extraordinary one. You can thank her for the idea of the amazing ripple graphic from the guide, featured in our last blog post below.

Last but most certainly not least, the woman behind the ridiculously beautiful design, my sister from another mister and most talented friend, Karyna Amador. The exponential impact this guide will have because of the way you made it come to life is immeasurable. What an artist you are!

I could talk about this thing for days, but I’ll just let you get to reading! Subscribe for emails for the download link.

Happy Earth Day, world! Let’s all do something good for the planet this week. :)

Love, Viv

The concept of sustainability applies to so much more than the environment. Health, money, relationships… they all fall in that category of things we want to keep around as long as possible.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, our ability to sustain our health is at risk. The economic crisis has made many of us fear for how we will financially sustain ourselves. Isolation has made us realize that our relationships are a vital part of what sustains our sanity. Everyday, we’re confronting the lesson that we’ve been taking our own sustainability for granted… but are we overlooking how the health of the planet plays a role in that too?

Let’s take just a moment to face some pretty grim realities. Beyond the prediction that climate change will throw the entire world out of balance in some future, which is estimated to affect the livelihood of over 100 million people; water and air pollution already kill an estimated 9 million people worldwide every year. Even scarier, new research conducted by Harvard University links air pollution to higher COVID-19 death rates, as lungs compromised by toxic air particles have a harder time fighting off the respiratory disease.

Meanwhile, the planet is getting a much-needed breather as we remain on lock-down. Smog has vanished faster than the virus spread from China to India to Spain. Even notoriously hazy US cities like LA and San Francisco are reporting clearer skies than they’ve seen in years after only a month in quarantine. Here in Miami our beach waters are so brilliantly blue that photos could be mistaken for remote islands. Unusual wildlife sightings are happening all over the world. Nature is not taking this time for granted. She’s doing what she can… while she has a chance.

What happens next, though? When all of this is over, do we just go back to normal and erase all of the progress the earth made? How can we step lightly back on the planet when we’re set free, not just for its well-being - but for our own? Sustainability of all kinds has never been more important and I think in some ways the world’s eyes are opening to that… but how do we make sure we don’t conveniently forget?

Personal accountability is key. We like to blame our planetary issues on others - it’s that country’s fault, it’s the airline industry’s fault, it’s the President’s fault… when in reality, we are all responsible. If we don’t acknowledge that we all need to make and demand drastic changes, the planet will not be the only one to suffer the consequences. We will too.

So what can we do as individuals, you ask? First off, vote… and not just in elections. The ballot we have the power to vote on every day is the vote with our dollars. Every dollar is a vote for or against the planet and, by association, its inhabitants - that’s us! Vote for sustainability by:

• Buying local.

• Not buying single-use plastics.

• Choosing sustainably sourced/ sustainably packaged products.

• Opting for renewable energy when you can.

• Offsetting car and air travel emissions by donating to a carbon offsetting project, like tree plantings.

• Eating vegan, at least every once in a while.

• Conserving water, even though it costs pennies.

There are so many seemingly little things we do every day that we don’t realize are contributing to the massive problems the world is facing. Yet, every time we spend money on something sustainable we’re creating new demand for the good stuff while phasing out the old ways that got us here. I think that’s the most important thing to remember when the economy “opens back up again” - we are the ones in the driver’s seat and our wallets are the steering wheel.

Already have a sustainable lifestyle down-packed, or looking for other ways to help save the planet while you’re in the process? Amazing. Next, challenge yourself to growing your influence:

• Share what you’re doing.

• Teach a kid, friend or family member about what they can do.

• Volunteer for an environmental organization.

• Find the one sustainable action you really care about and create a damn movement around it.

With Ascendance, I’m shooting for the latter. This is just my small way of going beyond the confines of my buying habits to make a bigger splash. You see, our individual behaviors ripple out to create exponential impact. Particularly, when we bring large groups of people together in the temporary worlds created by events like the ones we work with, the seemingly small decisions made by the event’s organizers create the framework for how the rest of us have to behave. This framework then pretty much decides for us whether our behaviors will have a positive or negative impact on the environment. For example, if an event doesn’t provide water refills, attendees usually have no choice but to purchase a plastic water bottle every time they’re thirsty.

We’re here to help events create frameworks that allow them to flip the switch from negative to positive environmental impact. Certainly, right now events are as zero waste and zero footprint as they’ll ever be as the entire industry is switched off for the moment, but no events is just, well… no fun. However long it takes, we know human beings will find a way to come together again - and when they do? Oh man, we will have quite a few big parties on our hands.

…but what if events could come back to a world where attendees used their dollars to demand more environmentally responsible behavior? What if we reached out and told our favorite events that this is what we’re hoping to celebrate together when we come back out into the world? What if events could use this time to reset their strategies so that they could help us all step lightly back on the planet together? What if their frameworks got so good they actually educated people on how to live more sustainably moving forward?

That’s what we’re here to help with… and in honor of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day we’ll be releasing a free guide that we’ve worked ever-so-diligently on during our “time off” to provide event organizers with the tools they’ll need to get started. We’re so excited for it to come out this Wednesday (Earth Day!) and we hope you’ll help us share our little gift to the planet with anyone it could help.

Let’s not let this global reset go to waste. Let’s do what we can while we have the time. Sustainability has never been more important… for us and for our planet.

Of my now 15 years working in events, 13 of them were spent working very not-sustainable ones. That’s one of the reasons why I started this company…that and my love for nature and passion for protecting this planet, which started long before then.

You see, my family is from Costa Rica. We’re one of the world’s smallest countries, yet we’re known globally for two things - pristine natural landscapes and…you guessed it, sustainability. Last year, Costa Rica ran on 100% renewable energy for 299 days, and by the year 2021, they plan to ban all single-use plastics and be entirely carbon neutral. When they achieve this, they’ll be the first country to prove to the world that it can be done.

I don’t think I quite realized how impactful it was for me to visit Costa Rica as a kid. Each time we went, my mom would make it a point to have at least 1 day on the itinerary to go see something spectacular; whether it was a waterfall, rainforest, beach or volcano…we’d always make time for mother nature. Coming back home to flat, mostly-concrete Miami was harder with every visit.

Increasing prices on flights to Costa Rica made those visits less frequent as I got older but when I got my first job in events after college, I’d save every penny to make my way back. I remember feeling like I could breathe again just at the sight of the mountains on the flight in. It was that stark contrast of being in nature and then coming home to work events that created mountains of waste that opened my eyes to the big problems with events that I’m now dedicated to solving.

At first, these visits inspired me to take on environmental responsibility on a personal level. I started recycling and minimizing the use of plastic cups and water bottles, but then I would go work my events and see thousands of those things given out every hour on the hour. I remember once I saw a huge pile of plastic that had gotten swept up at the end of the night, and it dawned on me that in just a few hours, my events were quite possibly creating more waste than I could in my entire lifetime. That moment made me feel so absolutely powerless that my stint at sustainability abruptly ended and it was years until I would pick it back up again.

I left that job 4 years later to travel and upon my return, soon found myself working in events again… this time as my own business, marketing and producing elements of both concert and sporting events for the biggest resort in the Bahamas - my first client.

At first, working at this place felt like I had been awarded an amazing opportunity to be closer to nature. I’d often be “assigned” to go to the island and interact with dolphins or swim with giant manta-rays. It was a dream gig for me… or was it? I’ll never forget the shock of hearing someone say: “It’s nice to look at, but what we’re enjoying here is the imprisonment of literally thousands of animals and the waste of probably millions of gallons of water”… shit.

How had I not seen this? How disconnected had I been to be galavanting around this place feeling lucky to be here? I see now that it was all part of my process. That client and I eventually parted ways, but I continued working in concert events feeling increasingly unfulfilled. Sure, there was a cool-factor to being somewhat in the music industry, but somehow all of the events I worked now felt increasingly inauthentic and exorbitantly wasteful. I felt drained, lost and in need of new direction.

My heart yearned to travel again. I wanted a hard reset on life and my boyfriend was crazy enough to jump on the bandwagon. We moved out of our apartment, threw everything in storage, packed up the car and hit the road with our dog for what was supposed to be a 3-month stint to California and back. We ended up living on the road for 8 months and it was one of the greatest adventures of our lives. We visited 9 national parks, 11 national forests and over 30 state parks… each one increasingly reminding me of my love for this planet and desire to protect the environment. I knew then that I couldn’t go back to working in any field that wasn’t serving this purpose.

At first, I became hyper aware of my waste and committed to ditching single-use plastics as much as possible, for good this time. I was a champion for “Leaving No Trace,” beach cleanups and proper recycling, while becoming a lot more educated on what those terms meant and their true abilities to make a real difference. Because of that and my previous experience, I knew I would have to go further this time and that’s when things started to come into focus. I decided I would take my then 12 years of event experience and shift my path towards event sustainability. The how was not clear yet, but being in nature had made my why more solid than ever.

What happened next is already history... I returned to Miami with a sharp vision for what I wanted to work on. I was hungry to learn everything I could about it. I devoured books, attended conferences, begged experts for mentorship and sooner rather than later I really started to know what I was talking about. It really dawned on me then, that instead of events creating these huge environmental problems, they could use their influence to spread solutions to the greater environmental problems we have today. Beyond their own ability to operate more consciously, events serve as a training grounds for every person in attendance to expand their own environmental consciousness.

This is why Ascendance was born. I think the world needs people fully dedicated to inspiring events to make sustainable choices and to show their attendees how they can do the same. So, welcome to the world, Ascendance. Let's dance the planet back to health.