Welcome to our goodchat. series, where we’ll be interviewing people in the music, events and sustainability space about how they got to where they are, what inspires them and what’s next.

Jayden Bath is the director of the Loch Hart Festival, a three day camping, BYO event with an all Australian lineup set in Princetown, Victoria. It has been running since the inaugural 2018 event, and sadly due to Covid, has been cancelled for 2020, but is already locked in for November 2021. Christie and I were lucky enough to attend the 2019 iteration. We arrived late on the Friday night to a relaxed vibe, and immediately made friends with around 10 other punters.

Loch Hart has awesome sustainability policies with B-Alternative running the reusable plate, bowl, cutlery and coffee cups and the bar running a reusable cup system using bettercup cups, all via a token scheme, and all other food packaging is compostable. Highlights for us included Alice Ivy (throwing cans from a slab to the crowd- what a queen), Genesis Owusu, Edd Fisher, comedy from Alex Keen, and the bar’s incredible Bloody Marys.

We loved how easy it was to strike up a conversation with the person standing next to you, and how beautifully relaxed and spaced out it felt. Loch Hart is small but very well curated, the kind of festival where you want to try every one of the food trucks, and you actually can.

It felt like we were witnessing (and partying at) the start of a big thing.

Hi Jayden, you are a lawyer as well as a Festival Director, which is a great combination of titles. You also seem like you’re a really laid-back person. Would you say that you’re attracted to high-stress roles? Were you planning Loch Hart while still studying?

Haha I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as laid back! But yes, somehow I am drawn to high-stress situations. In this instance, it was based on a passion for creating. When I made the ultimate decision to pursue the festival ‘full-time’, the final thought that nudged me over the line was how I would reflect on the idea when I was older. If I were to look back I’d either say I am so glad I made this successful festival, or I’d laugh at the time I tried to organise a music festival, but ultimately I knew I could never live with the thought of ‘what would have happened if I tried to run a festival’, and I hadn’t at least tried.

I wasn’t quite planning Loch Hart while studying, but I began investigating the feasibility of it. I knew it was something I was interested in, and being from Colac I knew there were so many beautiful locations that would be suitable. However, in my final year of uni I actually took a business management subject, which required you to write a business plan for a project – I chose to write about organising a music festival. I have never forgotten that I received one of my worst marks for that assignment; “wishful thinking” was one of the lecturer’s comments. Well…. It was, but hey, you’ve got to be!

You started Loch Hart in 2016 and then the first event launched in 2018. Did you have much experience in organising events, and was it much different to organise a festival? Was there a challenge that you didn’t foresee or a component of organising the event that you didn’t predict would be as hard as it ended up being?

Throughout my six-year stint at Uni, I was always organising events. They varied from huge house parties, to pub-crawls, right up to a 1,700-person $500k turnover event. Organising these events and bringing people together is certainly what inspired me to create Loch Hart Music Festival.

Though, I wouldn’t say running these events necessarily prepared me for the challenges of organising a festival. I never realised how many permits were involved, and how many different parties you need to liaise with and receive approval from. It ultimately took me two years of back and forth communication with Council, police, CFA, Victoria ambulance, and others to finally receive the permits for the festival.

Among the many incredible aspects of Loch Hart, we love its low waste approach (obv!). What inspired you to strive for this at Loch Hart, and was it easy to find the resources you needed?

We can do it – so we should do it. It is as simple as that.

David Attenborough said we cannot be too radical in tackling climate change. Having no single-use plastic onsite, all food vendors stocked with reusable plates, bowls, and sporks, the bar stocked with bettercup cups, and organising 900 attendees to adopt this model with no skip bin onsite as backup – is somewhat radical. But guess what, we did it, and so could other festivals.

Above is all the rubbish from the entire festival, including set up and pack down! A 900-person, 3 day, camping, BYO festival with NO skip bin on site at all.

It was scary, it was quite a bit of work, I felt uneasy informing our attendees that they had return their plate rather than just throw it in the bin – but it’s worth it. We are a small emerging festival, and so we are fortunate to only attract those crowds that care about the culture of our festival and they truly want to contribute to our community. All our attendees adopted it and it worked amazingly! You cannot be radical enough.

Can you tell us a little bit more about the logistics of going low waste, did you set goals for yourself, and what sort of plans did you put in place to make sure you were successful?

The most important thing was just having the mindset that it can be done. Tim and Jason from B-Alternative were certainly huge influencers in assuring me that it was possible!

In 2018, with 550 people at the festival we filled an 18 cubic metre skip bin, which was sent to landfill. Entering 2019, we had sold twice as many tickets and had ordered NO skip bin to be onsite – it was petrifying. Instead, we had 12 regular household bins and all of our waste for the three-day festival was to go in there.

However, compared to 2018, last year we have four B-Alternative staff monitoring the bins, assisting in washing and restacking the plates, bowls and cups, as well as a lot more consideration in all our purchases in the lead up to the event.

We finished the festival with 5 household bins going to landfill, 2 bins with glass (recycled), 2 bins with compost (composted on site), 2 bins with soft plastics (recycled into a product similar to wood), one trailer filled with cans and cardboard (which we sold to a recycling facility), and one bin that didn’t even use!

It was an extraordinary effort, and one that wouldn’t have been possible without teams such as B-Alternative and bettercup out there making it happen.

We had THE BEST time at Loch Hart 2019; Christie and I both agreed it was the best festival of the year. You’ve said that you try to make the festival have all the things you’d want in a festival, which I love. Do you think that festivals can grow endlessly while still bringing that vibe, or do you think there’s a limit? If so, how big do you think Loch Hart could be while still having that special vibe?

Firstly, thank you!! What an amazing compliment!

That is a question I often toy with, and as we grow I intend to stay flexible with our numbers. I believe culture is dictated by those that attend the festival, and is only steered by how we present it. So far, the culture our attendees have set have exceeded our expectations.

Evidence of us having THE BEST time at Loch Hart Festival 2019.

This sounds like a cliché, but there really is a vibe at Loch Hart. It is relaxed, happy, playful, and intimate, all while having a true sense of community. I believe if we keep steering our festival in this direction, our vibes will stay the same, and incremental growth will only benefit that.

Congratulations on your 30 Under 30 Award from The Music Network! Where do you see yourself beyond 30?

Thank you! My plan beyond 30 is to continue to create and grow Loch Hart. We have some radical ideas for future festivals, and we are keen to start pushing some boundaries beyond just an environmental aspect.

We can’t wait to see it, see you at the next Loch Hart!

goodchat. - Jayden Bath from Loch Hart Festival

our plastics.

goodchat. - Jason Rahilly from B-Alternative