Of tough decisions and online literary festivals - Kelly McCaughrain

My latest highly scientific lockdown Twitter poll was: Online Literary Festivals can have bigger audiences, cheaper tickets, are easier to attend, and are more environmentally friendly. But they employ fewer people, don't sell the author's books, have no social aspect etc. Would you like more festivals to be online post-lockdown?

The results were:

Yes – More eco-friendly 0%

Yes – easier to attend 22.2%

No – just not as fun 38.9%

No – job cuts, book sales 38.9%

Personally, I’m a big old yes, mainly because I possess a degree of introversion that is genuinely staggering, and any methods of reducing human interaction get the automatic thumbs up from me. 

But I was also swayed by the eco argument and I was kind of surprised that this got no votes at all.

Literary festivals are great. They provide a much needed income for writers, they sell books, they allow likeminded people to socialise and get excited about reading, they create jobs and promote the arts. I’ve been very grateful for the ones I’ve been asked to speak at and I think they’re important for writers and readers. But I’m also quite happy for them to be virtual.

Partly because they do have a carbon footprint, in the shape of writers having to fly all over the world, as well as readers flying or driving to attend. Most people who go are probably locals but some will have come a long way and that’s always kind of bothered me. Big name writers take dozens of flights a year to attend these things. Probably living in Northern Ireland makes me more aware of that because we have to fly to go anywhere, but having to take two flights just for a one hour event makes me feel really guilty. I’ve done it, and I'm sure I'll do it again, because I feel a responsibility to my book, my publisher, my agent, myself and my mortgage to do it, but I did feel bad and I kept thinking, how long are we going to get away with this shizz? Surely it's ridiculously wasteful.

I’ve always been kind of disgusted that my husband occasionally has to do long-haul flights just to go to meetings for his work. Surely if we’re taking the climate emergency seriously the first thing that has to go is long-haul travel to do things that could be done via the internet? I think a lot of companies were just used to doing things a certain way and assumed they couldn’t be done any other way. But since lockdown we’re discovering that a lot of things we thought were impossible, are actually complete possible, and environmentalists are claiming lockdown is proof that we can live differently. My husband hasn’t flown anywhere this year and his company has not collapsed for the lack of face to face meetings. Should we be saving the air miles for jobs where it's essential? 

On the other hand, his company did their annual conference online this year and my husband said it was pretty rubbish and he missed talking to people in person. Is it something we just need to get used to, or does it just not work at all?  

Literary festivals have not been stopped by lockdown. Some have been cancelled but a lot have moved online and if lockdown had continued for another year I imagine the rest would have followed suit.

And while there are cons to that, there are also pros. If you don’t happen to live in a big city, going to festivals can be really expensive. Even when I can afford it, I probably couldn’t be bothered going all the way to Edinburgh or Hay just for the two or three events I really want to see. But if they were online, I could go.

And a lot of festivals are run on a shoestring. There’s so little funding, and there’s going to be even less when the economic fallout of this year hits us. But an online festival event can cram in a lot more attendees than your tiny local library, and it’s easier for people to attend, so theoretically they could be selling a lot more tickets. Maybe even cheaper tickets.

And no one has to fly anywhere! 

 

But would people actually attend? It’s probably not ideal. Even I like the festival bookstalls, I like heading to the pub with a friend after an event, I’m sure it feels much more natural to talk to an audience you can see, I’d much rather do a school visit in person than online, and I kind of loathe Zoom calls. So yeah, we're talking actual sacrifices here. But that's kind of the point. 

We all complain because the idiots in power have been so slow to address the climate emergency that it might actually be too late. But do we really mean it? Are we willing to make changes in our own lives? Actual sacrifices that actually hurt. Surely (whisper it) literary festivals (that you can attend online anyway) aren’t anywhere near the top of the list of essentials.

So anyway, I was just a bit surprised that no one seemed to consider that a factor. What do you think? If everyone had to limit their air travel to two flights a year, would you be willing to see literary festivals move online to help us do that? Or would you stop attending if they weren’t IRL? How do you think the literary world can/should contribute to reversing climate change?

In the absence of real changes from the government to tackle climate change, I’m genuinely interested to know what people would be prepared to do without. I’m not saying it would be ideal, and I’d pretty much club a baby seal to death* to attend the Iceland Writers Retreat. 

(*not really)

But since I’ll never be able to afford the Iceland Writers Retreat, I can afford to be sanctimonious. 

I'm kidding. I love Greta.

Kelly McCaughrain is the author of the Children's Books Ireland Book of the Year,

Flying Tips for Flightless Birds. 

She is the Children's Writing Fellow for Northern Ireland #CWFNI

She also blogs at The Blank Page

@KMcCaughrain