Green Day Concert

Recently, Valpo Surf Project got the amazing opportunity to take a group of students to a Green Day concert in Santiago and attend a workshop backstage about large-scale event production put on by Lotus Productions. Lotus Productions puts on huge concerts throughout the year— but Lollapalooza Chile, a multi-day festival, is their biggest annual event.

VSP was invited by another NGO that teaches surfing, Te Mahatu. During the car-pool to Santiago and downtime between the workshop and the concert, many new friendships were made between the two groups of students.

Two members of the event production team put on the workshop, and we all sat in a group backstage listening to their talk. We got to learn about all of the planning that goes into such big events--it’s a minimum of 6 months of work for this one night. Between the physical set-up of the stage and the safety measures taken, to the tiniest details like how the production staff tries to be considerate to people living nearby, there was so much more that went into the event than we were aware of.

Lotus productions has also been working on making their events more sustainable, and they are constantly making changes to make their events more eco-friendly. All of Lotus’s events are considered carbon-neutral, which means they estimate the carbon footprint caused by their events, and create renewable energy projects to combat that. We as VSP, an organization that promotes environmental stewardship, loved hearing what this production company does. Promoting clean energy was a clear part of their business model.

For the majority of the students that we took to Santiago, it was their first concert experience ever— and what a concert it was. It was an unforgettable night dancing and singing with friends under the concert lights.