ROSKILDE FESTIVAL
― A Temporary Urban Laboratory
↑ Lene-Maria Toksværd ― Ivan Boll (Courtesy of Roskilde Festival)
Lene-Maria Toksværd, Director of Trade and Gastronomy at Roskilde Festival, discusses the festival’s role as a temporary city and its potential to affect local food culture and politics. Lene-Maria has had a lifelong fascination with food’s cultural and natural connections. Initially considering a career as a chef, she instead pursued studies in religion, philosophy and food management. Inspired by her rural upbringing and summers at her grandparents’ house in Northern Jutland, she has translated her passion for food and nature into her role at the festival. Through her work, Lene-Maria seeks to harness the power of food to shape behaviours and influence the broader food system.
Every year at the end of June, Roskilde Festival transforms into Denmark’s fourth-largest city, serving as a living lab for cultural and systemic change beyond the festival’s grounds. With 130,000 young visitors annually, it offers a unique platform for examining and influencing generational perspectives on global issues.
This pop-up city, with infrastructural needs equivalent to Odense, continues to develop new sustainable food supply and waste management models. Its 130 food outlets serve around 1.5 million organic, plant-rich meals over eight days with minimal waste, providing a closed-loop system for exploring innovative practices. This environment fosters entrepreneurial creativity, allowing us to envisage and test future urban models.
Historically, we’ve grappled with substantial food waste, often incinerated for energy. Even for energy production, burning food is fundamentally imbalanced, and using it as livestock feed isn’t the solution either. Our food waste initiative, which collects leftover food for donation, has had a substantial effect. We collected 23 tonnes in 2019 and 13 tonnes in 2022. Surplus food is collected and donated to shelters and small institutions, which improves lives and prevents food wastage. While these numbers seem high, they are low compared to the over one million meals served at the festival.
Drawing parallels to urban scenarios, we advocate for making near-expired supermarket food available to all. The retail and service sector should not discard food for profitability, especially given our abundant access to food. Supermarkets stock their shelves to appear full, yet excess food often ends up in the trash when it nears or reaches its expiration. Fostering respect for food production and producers is essential.
Food’s power to foster unity and a healthier relationship with nature is highlighted in our efforts to use the festival as a lab for social transition. We use the open mindset of festival-goers ready to participate in unusual things in their daily lives to test out new ideas. Through artistic and cultural engagements, we are weaving new narratives about food, pushing for a timely reassessment of our connections with nature.
Another Outlook for Agriculture
In Denmark, we often cite ourselves as a global leader in the efficiency of our food production. However, efficiency doesn’t necessarily equate to balance. Our agricultural practices extract more from nature than replenish in a non-regenerative cycle.
Denmark’s countryside has evolved into a monoculture for food production, resulting in a marked biodiversity loss. Efforts to rejuvenate rural areas with regenerative farming exist but remain minimal. Over the past century, urban and rural areas have significantly diverged. Post World War II, Denmark intensified food production and export, transforming 60% of the country into farmland, predominantly for feed crops and pig rearing for export. Consequently, the cultural landscape shifted drastically, with small farms diminishing along with their economic role in the rural landscape and large, often foreign, corporations assuming ownership.
The prospect of reverting to traditional farming may seem radical, but we must recognise the detrimental shifts in urban food culture. While farmers can still supply foods locally in Denmark, demand needs to increase to make this transition attractive. Supermarkets have reshaped eating habits, yet their convenience has devalued food and led to a scarcity of local seasonal produce. We need to increase local food demand and be open to paying the true cost of food production while embracing seasonal availability. This shift, however, should not rest solely on individuals but requires structural changes in policy and education.
The Power of Policy
Roskilde Festival transitioned to organic food service some years ago; our journey has been challenging and transformative. Initially, the industry could not keep up with the sudden demand for organic groceries in such a short period in June. However, the policy compelled wholesalers, commercial partners, and food stalls to expand their organic offerings and retire the rest. The move triggered progress in the food service sector, making organic products more affordable and accessible.
By turning our large-scale festival organic, we influenced consumer culture and food production capacities, signalling our commitment to balance in nature and households, preservation of fertile soil, and respect for animal life. We redesigned our food delivery approach to accommodate this change, considering the higher costs of organic animal products and the feasibility of direct organic substitutions. We faced supply challenges, enlisted chefs to train vendors and create balanced menus, and collaborated with wholesalers to secure the organic supply chain. Despite the higher costs of organic farming, it did not significantly influence the sales prices at the festival and counteracted the culture of cheap, fast food.
Our shift to organic food extended beyond our festival boundaries and inspired broader policy changes. Despite the absence of certifications for organic food at festivals when we began, our collaboration with the Danish Food and Drug Administration and the National Organic Association resulted in the first Organic Food Label for events in 2013, facilitating implementation. By 2022, we achieved 94.5% organic status, inspiring other festivals to follow suit. We found that with the proper framework, dialogue, training, and education, it’s possible to instigate change in food policy across Denmark.
The Influence of Education
We found that fostering change is most effective through active engagement and education. Collaboration with food professionals and organisations stimulates discussions about food sustainability among young people, contributing to eco-conscious development.
Many people have lost the knowledge of handling fresh produce due to the prevalence of convenience food. Reeducation could start in schools because food provides a tangible context to learn about nature, science, and culture. Instilling this knowledge in children ensures participation in a more sustainable, local food system, although this system may require more attention than removing a frozen pizza’s packaging.
The strategy implemented at Roskilde Festival could serve as a model. Our community kitchens allow thousands of attendees to prepare meals using local, seasonal produce instead of relying solely on food stalls. This direct involvement in food production leaves a lasting impression, influencing their future food choices.
Experimental Urban Design
The temporary city allows us to blur the boundaries between policy, planning and design by focusing on the experience as an agent of change. Conceptual shifts in urban design and food systems are crucial. At Roskilde Festival, we employ innovative gastronomic experiences to engage attendees, empowering their food decisions. For instance, our oyster meditation highlights the importance of seasonal availability and the role of organisms in ecological balance. We use artistic methods in our workshops and sensory labs to share stories of local biodiversity, boosting the demand for local produce and preparing attendees for future food experiences.
In city planning, sensory-stimulating spaces like seasonal gardens, edible plantations, and communal kitchens play an important role. These spaces enable people to interact with and understand the food they consume. Municipal initiatives like providing spaces for urban farming could be revolutionary. In Copenhagen, for instance, residents can receive funds to promote biodiversity in their yards. For the 2024 Roskilde Festival, we aim to establish a community campsite focused on food production and permaculture, providing hands-on learning experiences about urban farming and cooking.
We cultivate everyday activism by exposing festival-goers to our vision of a more diverse world, respecting each other and the planet’s resources. Simple experiments can stay with us and create ripple effects in the world.