Students can power a popcorn maker and a concert’s speakers with bikes at Coastalong Festival.
The 100% bike- and solar-powered concert and sustainability fair will move into its seventh year Saturday at the Sunset Canyon Recreation Center. Attendees can listen to live music, browse vendor booths and create art at the student-run event. This year, Coastalong focused on expanding to showcase sustainable organizations and involve students in a more engaging way, said Jacob Zazzeron, the festival’s executive producer.
“As a sustainable organization here, it’s important for us to give other sustainable organizations a space to share what they do for the campus as well, and at the same time it enhances our event by having different interactive things,” said Zazzeron, a fourth-year economics student.
Coastalong will feature booths and installations from 21 UCLA groups like Bruins for Animals and the Farmers Market at UCLA, and food and clothing vendors will be in attendance as well, Zazzeron said. The festival chose locally sourced food vendors that limit meat and offer more sustainable options, said Daniella Kelley, the event’s co-sustainability director and a third-year environmental science student. Kye’s, a Santa Monica-based restaurant, will sell vegan wraps and black bean brownies, while Daydrinkers, a recently opened food truck, will supply juice and lemonade.
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This is Coastalong’s first year emphasizing off-campus organizations aside from food vendors. The organizers hope to raise awareness about companies making strides in the environmental movement, Kelley said. One company planning to set up at the event is For Days, a closed-loop apparel company through which members can trade in their old shirts when they buy new ones. Another featured company is FinalStraw, which sells collapsible metal straws to eliminate plastic waste, she said.
“We tried to get a diverse group of organizations that embody sustainability in everyday life. A lot of the clothing companies integrate sustainability in a unique way and incorporate it into fashion,” Kelley said. “We’re trying to show that, within our community outside of UCLA, there’s a lot going on as well.”
However, Kelley said UCLA clubs remain the heart of Coastalong. The on-campus organizations present at the event two years ago first exposed her to the diversity of environmental organizations on campus, she said. She hopes to maintain that same educational component this year by giving environmental clubs a space to share their work with the UCLA community. By having spaces for people to hang out in hammocks, make flower crowns and ride stationary bikes to power the stage, Coastalong creates an involved atmosphere in which people can learn about sustainability without having it feel forced, Kelley said.
Coastalong – which used to be called Ecochella – takes inspiration from the vibe and activities of other arts and music festivals, but distinguishes itself by basing the event around eco-friendliness, said Marissa Bennett, Coastalong’s art and design director. In addition to the bike-generated electricity aspect, Coastalong uses entirely compostable utensils to minimize the wasteful use of plastic that can occur at mainstream festivals like Coachella, Kelley said.
Bennett, a third-year design media arts student, spearheaded the creative process for coming up with interactive art installations. As in years past, the festival plans to incorporate a traditional paint-by-numbers station in which participants can contribute to a large mural, she said. Bennett’s committee members created the sustainability-focused designs for festivalgoers to paint in. Inspired by environmentalism, the designs feature trees, flowers and hummingbirds, Bennett said.
Drawing inspiration from Coastalong’s theme of sustainability, Bennett said she and her team used environmental materials and other recyclables in their art installations. They picked and pressed flowers from The Original Los Angeles Flower Market downtown to decorate clear cubes in order to put the Earth’s natural beauty on display, Bennett said. They also repurposed CDs that a Coastalong engineering director had lying around her lab, turning them into a hazardous electronic-waste photo backdrop to give would-be trash a second life, she said.
“I think the art installations add an interactive element. Not only can you go and listen to music, but you can also kind of leave your mark on the festival, which I think is pretty cool,” Bennett said.
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Coastalong representatives said the festival’s mission is to disseminate information not only on the current state of the environment, but also on concrete ways to combat climate change by implementing sustainability. Bennett said Coastalong encourages attendees to make change so that they can take their individual sustainable practices – like bringing their own reusable straws or carrying their own water – to festivals like Coachella.
“I think that a huge goal of Coastalong is to try and make the festival as much like any other festival as possible so it almost doesn’t even feel sustainable,” Kelley said. “That way, sustainability becomes normalized and people learn that it can be easy.”