We are continually finding better ways to make and share music: reducing the impact of our travel and production, creating meaningful work with children and communities, supporting conservation and sharing what we learn with others.
Why music matters
John Warner on music and nature
Anyone who has stood beneath a gathering storm, listened to birds at dawn or watched the light change across a landscape knows that nature can stir the same deep emotions as music.
Both play a vital part in our mental and physical wellbeing. They help us slow down, pay attention and feel connected: to ourselves, to one another and to the world around us. Both can bring people together across generations, cultures and backgrounds, creating powerful shared experiences.
This matters especially for children. At a time when many young people have fewer opportunities to spend time in nature or encounter live music, access to both can nurture curiosity, confidence, creativity and a sense of belonging.
Composers have drawn on the natural world for centuries, through birdsong, rivers and weather, but also through experiences of space, silence, movement and time. At OE, we bring those connections to life through concerts, education projects and collaborations with artists, scientists, writers and environmental organisations.
Facts, targets and policy remain essential. But lasting change also depends on imagination, culture and what people learn to notice, value and love. That belief shapes not only the work we create, but how we travel, who we work with and the more sustainable ways we are continually finding to make and share music.
OE in numbers
Some of the most important things we do are difficult to measure: the moment a child hears a cello outdoors for the first time, or an audience falls silent by candlelight. But numbers can tell part of the story.
20,000+ miles travelled on tour by train and coach, without flying
1,500+ children involved in workshops and family performances
8 Alpine Tours following Mahler's footsteps since 2017
3 candlelit concerts for WWF's Earth Hour
1 Alpine nature reserve co-founded: the Gustav Mahler Field of Flowers
Learning through listening
From listening walks in Alpine meadows to family opera at the Royal Ballet and Opera, OE helps children connect with music and nature together — discovering both through play, curiosity and their own ears. Working with schools, festivals and local educators, our musicians have now brought live music, storytelling and the sounds of the natural world to more than 1,500 children across the UK, Austria and Italy.
Sustainable touring
Touring allows us to build lasting relationships with audiences, communities and landscapes. We plan those journeys carefully, travelling by land, keeping routes coherent and choosing the scale of ensemble and team each project genuinely needs.
Travelling by land rather than flying dramatically reduces the carbon emissions associated with our European touring. Smaller forces also allow us to reach regional and rural venues that larger orchestras cannot easily visit. Where a project calls for more musicians, we look for opportunities to work with local ensembles, reducing unnecessary travel while creating artistic exchange.
This approach shapes the experience of the tour as well as its environmental impact: musicians travel together, spend longer in each place and form deeper connections with the people and landscapes around them.
Tickets for Trees
One ticket. One contribution to a healthier landscape.
For every ticket sold to an OE concert, we make a contribution to Eden: People+Planet’s landscape-restoration work.
Trees remain central to that work, but Eden’s approach goes further than planting alone. It works with local communities to restore and protect whole landscapes, supporting native forests, biodiversity, fire prevention and sustainable livelihoods.
Our contribution is not used to offset the emissions from our concerts. It is an additional way in which every audience member helps support the recovery of landscapes and the people who care for them.
Further ideas and resources
OE is part of a growing movement across music and the arts to reduce emissions, rethink touring and use culture to deepen public engagement with climate and nature.
Practical guidance
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Julie’s Bicycle Resource Hub — guidance, case studies and tools created specifically for the cultural sector.
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Creative Climate Tools — free tools for measuring and understanding emissions from energy, travel, waste, water and other activity.
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Julie’s Bicycle: International Touring and Environmental Responsibility — resources on reducing the impact of cultural mobility and touring.
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Theatre Green Book — widely used standards and guidance for more sustainable productions, buildings and operations.
Music and climate organisations
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Music Declares Emergency — a global movement bringing together artists, audiences and the music industry around climate action.
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Classical Declares — the classical-music strand of Music Declares Emergency.
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Music Climate Pact — an initiative bringing music businesses together around science-aligned climate commitments.
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Orchester des Wandels (Orchestras of Change) — a network of musicians from professional German orchestras using concerts and projects to support climate, nature and species protection.
Examples from orchestras and opera companies
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Lahti Symphony Orchestra: Carbon-Free Symphony — a long-running orchestra-wide programme addressing emissions and environmental responsibility.
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Opera North: Environmental Responsibility — an organisation-wide approach covering buildings, production, travel, staff and audiences.
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Royal Ballet and Opera: reducing Scope 3 emissions — a case study on suppliers, indirect emissions and sector-wide collaboration.
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Scottish Classical Sustainability Group — bringing Scotland’s classical-music sector together to promote sustainability, share best practice and act collectively in response to the climate emergency.
Broader culture and climate thinking
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Climate Outreach — research and practical guidance on communicating climate change with different audiences.
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Culture for Climate Scotland — resources and programmes supporting environmental action across the cultural sector.
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The Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations — research into how societies can make rapid, fair and lasting changes in response to climate change.
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Possible — practical campaigns and public engagement around positive climate action.