ICM Rocking Research at Roskilde Festival 2014

During the week of the Roskilde Festival a group of ICM researchers dedicated to study sustainability in the rise and fall of a temporary city with 130.000 inhabitants. It is the second year that CBS engages in a research project with Roskilde Festival under the leadership of Esben Rahbek-Pedersen and Per Østergaard (our colleague from PEØ at CBS). The team of about 12 passionate CBS researchers participated under three headlines: "Waste as a Resource", "Food, Production, Waste" and "Alternative Housing" and in our 120 kvm backstage tent, we hosted a series of sustainability seminars with a group of Danish dairy manufacturers (and Dansk Erhverv), a group of IBM staff, a team of sustainable fashion producers (H&M, Danish Fashion Institute, etc.). Thousands of destroyed tents left in the field after 9 days of partying is a central waste problem for the festival. A key feature for our project is therefore Rockwool's experimentation with new forms of housing and based on last year's experimentation with rockwool, housing and young people living in them, they had developed 52 alternative tents that kept out noise and hot weather. Expensive but sold out in 2 days !

The CBS team has systematically worked to develop more corporate attention to the huge potential in studying and experimenting with sustainability in cities at the Roskilde Festival. This year CEO Karsten Dybvad from Confederation of Danish Industries (Dansk Industri) and CEO Markus Kerber from Bundes Deutsches Industrie (invitation orchestrated by Lucia Reisch) participated in a seminar welcomed by the CEO of Roskilde Festival Henrik Rasmussen. Dybvad and Kerber worked the trash in person - and also our very own Dean of Research Alan Irwin supported the project as Dybvad, Kerber, Reisch and the dairy manufacturers joined us for a "flæskesteg-sandwich" and a talk with Claus Meyer.

And then we all went to rock with the Rolling Stones. Quoting Mick Jagger: "It is not all about rock'n roll but we like it!"