Doughnut Music Lab is a new art and research collective that draws on ideas from Doughnut Economics to imagine what shape musical life might take in a post-fossil fuel future.Based at the University of Glasgow, it has so far involved collaborations with artists, the music sector,and researchers across disciplines including music, engineering, public health, and data science. It also links intoa project called GALLANT. Project co-leads Matt Brennan and Graeme Hunt explain how it all came about.

Matt: Graeme, you’re a mechanical engineer and research associate at the University of Glasgow working on renewable energy on a number of projects, including a big project called GALLANT.  What is GALLANT?

Graeme: At its essence,GALLANT is a project to try and help the city of Glasgow to reach net-zero.  The project is a kind of living laboratory for ideas around how to do this, or at the very least, introduce more sustainable conditions for living and working. As we’re in a transition period, we also recognise the need to bring people along with us if we’re to achieve any measure of success.

Matt:  You and I met at a GALLANT event in 2023 where I was talking about what role music and culture might play in addressing the climate crisis and a just and green transition… 

Graeme:  Yes – I spoke on portable renewable power and discussed how to replace diesel generators because there’s currently a lot of discussion about what to replace them with, and what is (and isn’t) technologically ready.  Recently, councils in England have been debating the merits of prohibiting diesel generators when they grant event applications, so the need to find a solution for this is perhaps more urgent than the industry realises. 

Matt:What are the obstacles that prevent people from changing their behaviour around this and around using diesel generators generally?

Graeme:  There are two clear hurdles; confusion around the language used regarding alternative energy sources, and a lack of trust due to unfamiliarity with them.  Put simply, the language used by the renewable power supplies people to talk about energy consumption is different to what the events industry is used to. This information gap can lead people to talk at cross purposes.

The second hurdle is resistance to change.  Although diesel generators are not ‘green’, event organisers know that they won’t give them a power outage halfway through an event, and perhaps aren’t informed enough about the reliability of the alternatives. The lack of familiarity around newer technologies can lead to an excess of caution, which is a huge stumbling block to progress.

Matt:  Is price an issue?

Graeme:  Yes. Generally speaking with regards to power requirements, you have a capital expense and an operational expense: the price you pay for the thing itself and then the cost of running it. With diesel, these two things are separate, and they’ll appear in different places in a budget.

With renewable batteries, because the energy used is contained within the system, all of that price is put into the capital expense (the cost of hiring it).  Often people don’t realise this, so can be put off by the initial, higher outlay.  Then there’s the fact that renewable energy sources can be more expensive because there are less of them on the market.

Matt:  You also do mapping work on the temporary infrastructure for short-term events, correct?

Graeme:  I do. Obviously there are a number of small events that take place across Glasgow for which a diesel generator might be hired.  Perhaps your local pub has an event in the car park over summer, so it hires one.  Even though the greenhouse gas output of this small event might not amount to much in the grand scheme of things, it all adds up over time and with the numbers of places doing it.  Smaller businesses also don’t usually have the capacity or funds for things like a sustainability manager.

Matt:  That brings us to the impetus for this project. Unlike you, I’m not an engineer, but like many citizens, I’m really concerned about climate change.  I keep reading that the climate crisis is an ‘all hands on deck’ problem which I take to include music, even though that may not be a comparatively high-emitting sector.  From your perspective as an engineering researcher, what role do youthink music and culture might play in addressing these challenges?

Graeme:  Well, in some ways, there’s an attitude amongst many of ‘it’s only a small amount, so I don’t need to worry about it,’ but again, it all adds up!  By taking action and by harnessing its cultural power in particular, the music industry can certainly make a positive difference.  Artists who actively use their influence to promote a sustainable way of touring and lead by example can make a significant impact!

From an engineering perspective, we need to continue to innovate and explore alternative, high-energy density fuels if we want to move forward.  Then there’s the challenge of designing and creating the new technologies to power the music events of the future.  The technologies in the lab also need to be tested before they can be rolled out, so it’s a big job!

Matt:  In practice, we both worked on this a bit last summer via a project called Dear Green Music Scene; a collaboration with artists and musicians to create a solar powered music trailer called the Phonoautobothy which we took to various events around Glasgow.  It had a solar powered recording booth and was also used as a solar music stage.  Did you find the engineering and music collaboration on the Phonoautobothy fit into your aims for a just and green transition?

Graeme: Definitely, the Phonoautobothy was great and the fact that we managed to power two music stages entirely using renewable energy without a hitch was brilliant!   It was wonderful to showcase to both the public and industry that it was possible.  One of the sound engineers at WestFest even queried whether the hydrogen reactor was running (as unlike diesel generators which emit a lot of noise pollution, it’s silent). They were surprised when I said yes!

Matt: Yeah, it was fab!  Am I also right in thinking that your team does research into heating? 

Graeme:  Yes, heat is a big part of our research.  If you look at electricity, a lot of it has been decarbonised.  Heating has not.  Many throughout the UK are still heated via gas central heating using combi boilers, for example.  So that’s something both GALLANT and local councils are focusing on. 

Matt:  What have you discovered so far?

Graeme:  We’re looking into how we can heat our homes more sustainably and efficiently.  To do this, we’re gathering data on the heating and electricity consumption across Glasgow and then examining that data against Scotland’s Index of Multiple Deprivation.  Although fuel poverty shouldn’t be a thing in the 21^st century, it very much is, so we’re also trying to identify the areas that suffer from this.  Comparing the heat and energy demands of affluent versus poorer areas alongside the influence affluence has on your decision to switch the heating on is also a focus.

There are also issues to be solved of how to heat large cultural spaces such as nightclubs, for example.  The amount of heating required by a big club can be significant because as of yet there’s no obvious solution. There still needs to be innovation in this area.

Matt:  Fuel poverty is a huge issue. I read that heating alone counts for almost half of the UK’s energy use.^[1] As a music academic, I realise this problem is much bigger and harder than powering small events. From your perspective, is there any role for the cultural sector to help address this issue?

Graeme:  Raising awareness around energy issues is crucial, because not everyone realises that they exist!  If the cultural sector encouraged artists to use their platforms to highlight issues around energy use, it would be massively helpful as musicians can be more inspiring than academics, and the audience demographic they can reach is also different.

This was one of our learning points from the Dear Green Music Scene events which engaged audiences often missed by normal science and engineering engagement events. This finding underlined the importance of reaching outside of our echo chamber!

Matt:  Would you say that integration and collaboration is central to the way GALLANT works?

Graeme: Very much so.  The entire job of our community collaboration work stream is to engage with, listen to, and build trust within communities. Whilst I may be involved in the design and build of whatever the thing is that we’re working on, I’m not trained in convincing people of its merit or encouraging them to use it!   So, if arts and humanities people can contribute to building bridges of understanding, that’s huge. 

Taking the trailer around various locations also gave us engineers access to people we wouldn’t usually be able to talk to; and them to us!  Music and culture opened that door wide.

We also had a tent full of engineering volunteers and researchers who did activities with families and provided a lot of extra value.  A particular hit was a little wind power generator with an LED display that showed how much energy it was generating whilst it charged up a little battery inside.  Both kids and adults alike were intrigued to see how wind energy could tangibly change something – it generated a lot of conversation!

Matt:  The second phase of the Dear Green Music project is an artistic intervention we’re calling Doughnut Music Lab.  This initially involves us releasing a couple of albums of new music that will have beautiful, 12-inch vinyl record sleeves.  Conspicuously absent however will be the vinyl record itself, which will be replaced by a series of paper inserts with some specially-made artwork, a download code, plus this essay! The sleeve itself will be printed on recycled card using plant-based inks, and as such there will be a minimum of new plastic generated for the album release. 

Folk in the GALLANT project are also interested in the idea of Doughnut Economics, which was originally developed by Kate Raworth. She and others have convincingly argued that the political objective of unchecked economic growth is propelling humanity towards irrevocable damage to the planet. Doughnut Economics is founded on a simple diagram showing a sustainable window for economic activity, providing, in Raworth’s words, ‘a social foundation of well-being that no one should fall below, and an ecological ceiling of planetary pressure that we should not go beyond. Between the two lies a safe and just space for all.’ ^[2] You see in the diagram below, for example, elements of a social foundation and also the consequences of overshooting our ecological ceiling. Raworth’s model of economic activity is about as high level as it’s possible to get, global in scale, but she encourages people working in different disciplines to adapt and apply the model to their own fields. 

As someone who wants music to thrive in a post-fossil-fuel future, I’m keen to apply these ideas to the music sector through the idea of a Music Doughnut: ‘a sustainable system for musical life that contributes to a social foundation of well-being that no one should fall below, while respecting the ecological ceiling of planetary pressure that we should not go beyond. A sustainable music ecosystem operates between the limits of the aforementioned foundation and ceiling – a safe and just musical space for all.’

I don’t want to get rid of records (although I’d welcome them being made of renewable materials), and I don’t see a paper ‘sleeve-only and download code’ album release as a one-size-fits-all solution. I see it as an artistic intervention, with any impact coming from its symbolic power – the power of directing attention and holding space for imagining alternative ways of being in the world. In other words, it’s a prompt to spark conversation around how high-emitting areas of human activity (e.g. energy, transport, food, manufacturing) need an urgent rethink. Ideally it might encourage a sense of playful experimentation and prompt people to reflect on plastic consumption and carbon-intensive behaviours at both individual and institutional levels.

Despite the small scale of this intervention, do you think it’s still worth discussing how in buying things like new vinyl we take new oil out of the ground? 

Graeme:  Yes – there’s lots to be said for the idea of not taking new oil out of the ground or creating too much new plastic where possible. Plastic also doesn’t recycle as well as metal and glass, which can be recycled infinitely; there’s a shelf-life to it. Most plastics are only recycled once or twice as the plastic quality lowers when recycled.^[3] This means that at some point they have to be disposed of, either through landfill or burning usually. Manufacturing plastic is also energy intensive in itself. For every barrel of oil that comes from the crude oil out of the ground the bulk of it is burnt as fuel, so reducing that would permit plastics to be made without the need for excessive further oil extraction.^[4]

[1] Ofgem. 2016. Ofgem’s Future Insights Series: The Decarbonisation of Heat. Ofgem website. 

[2] Raworth, K. 2018. Doughnut Economics. London: Random House, p.11.

[3] Anon. 2019. How many times can plastic be recycled? Plastic Expert website.

[4] US Energy Information Administration. 2023. How many gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel are made from one barrel of oil? US EIA website.