Hi all, I've been lurking around the forum for a while and getting some very useful advice from the threads, but this is my first post and in typical n00b fashion it's a request for help.

I'm currently writing my MSc dissertation, which is an investigation into the environmental impact of a music festival. I've got the vast majority of the work done (just analysis left to do) but there's a section which I feel is lacking.

I'd like to include a paragraph or two on recommendations for future research, with reference to the lack, or otherwise, of study that's gone into the topic. The problem is that I can't find a great deal of literature on the subject via journal searches, but from talking to other students and staff it seems that several other postgrad dissertations have focused on a similar subject to mine.

So, what I'd like to do is try to get an idea of just how much work has gone into the environmental impact of music festivals at the postgrad level. If anyone has done any work on this, I would very much appreciate if you could get in touch either on this thread or by PM.

Just to be clear - I am NOT asking for a look at your dissertations/theses, all I'd like is the title of the study and the year it was done, as well as a very brief summary of the conclusion so that I can include it, correctly referenced, in my own dissertation.

Any help will be most gratefully received.

terrible topic

Hi Bob,
IMO this is a very valid topic - although I'm sure lots of people will just hear "I'm studying music festivals" and draw their own conclusions. I don't know of any relevant studies, but a few thoughts spring to mind. You could look at whether festivals have done their own environmental assessments, these might be slow to get hold of but I imagine the likes of Glastonbury will have done some work into their various footprints. There are also probably social/economic impact studies done; you could look at these and see whether the natural environmental context was or wasn't also investigated. You could also look at what other types are large events have been assessed for their environmental impacts and see if there is any common or missing ground with relation to music festivals; perhaps things like county shows or agricultural shows.

Best of luck with the final stages and finishing your masters

Yeh, I also think this is an interesting topic. Live music in pubs has almost died off in some cities in my country, and people get their fix by going to an increasing number of festivals, so this is a really valid topic. Wouldn't your library have a database of dissertations? I know they used to exist on CD-ROM years ago, and are now probably available through a database. You should talk to a friendly librarian.

your library should have a searchable database of PhDs, if not, the librarian will help you find it. We have one, or used to have last time I looked, but it is only searchable whilst you are actually at uni, which I'm not at the moment. I also think you may have to think rather laterally when searching. For example, there may be newspaper articles which report the amount of rubbish collected at such festivals, which could be a starting point. You could also try waste management to see if anyone in that field has written anything. Don't forget things like noise/light pollution for people living nearby, transportation aspects etc. most I guess may be rather hard to validate but might suggest areas that could provide worthwhile research areas and you could comment upon their lack of robustness as a reason for the need for future research.