Behind the Scenes at ACL: Designing the Future of Festival Culture
Austin City Limits made one thing clear: culture shifts when better choices are easy. Our team participated in a behind the scenes experience and had an opportunity to interview emerging artists and food vendors who are the cultural architects shaping what feels normal and exciting. Music festivals can turn that influence into a living lab for climate action and culture change.
When an artist celebrates a climate song on stage, when a vendor serves plant food that tastes amazing, and when compost and refill stations are everywhere, people see how easy alignment can be while still doing the things they love. Small choices become shared habits, then new norms at home. Festivals show that joy and responsibility can co-exist, and those lessons travel home in your habits, your playlist, and your plate.
Over the weekend, we had the chance to speak with several artists about how they see culture changing from the stage to the food options, and what it looks like to make sustainability feel natural and inviting for everyone. Small choices become shared habits, then new norms at home. Festivals show that joy and responsibility can co-exist, and those lessons travel with you in your habits, your playlist, and your plate.
From the Stage: Artists Shaping What’s “Normal”
Shallow Water: Lead with Ease
“People want to care, you just have to show them how and that it’s not scary.”
- Shallow Water
Festivals are perfect proving grounds for living by example. When artists and organizers make sustainable choices visible, like plant-forward meals, clear compost and recycling, refill stations, and low-waste merch, people see what is possible and try it on the spot. The energy of a crowd lowers the barrier to entry, so it feels normal, fun, and easy. Those small wins build muscle memory that travels home with festivalgoers. If people loved the plant-based taco at ACL, they will look for it next week in their everyday lives. Lead with taste and convenience, repeat the cues, and the habits stick long after the music fades.
Good Neighbours: Practice Builds Culture
Good Neighbours didn’t set out to chase the main stage at ACL, they showed up for each other on the hard days and kept creating until the work carried them to ACL.
“We were just making music for our own pleasure, to get through some darker days… it was just showing up and doing it every day and being gentle with ourselves. Then you look up and you’re here.”
That arc is the sustainability arc too: start where you are, keep practicing, be gentle with yourself, and let the community lift you. The band’s Blue Sky Mentality is the same mindset we bring to food and climate: optimism you can practice daily. Small actions compound, culture shifts, and over time what we seek can actualize!
Judy Blank: Change the Default, Change the Norm
We interviewed the singer-songwriter Judy Blank who put it simply: make the plant-based option the easy, tasty default and the culture follows.
“You’re not really saying, ‘hey, you can’t eat meat’, you’re saying, ‘here is a delicious meal that is plant-based,’ and you’re taking the stigma away… it needs to feel warm and welcoming and less like a rule or a regulation.”
- Judy Blank
She’s seen venues in the Netherlands serve vegetarian meals to all bands, no preaching, just good food, and watched the stigma fall away. Imagine ACL adopting that backstage: artists fueled by plant-fueled meals that are good for them and the planet, no one feeling policed, everyone feeling welcomed. Change the default, change the norm. The same spirit carried over to the festival grounds, where vendors proved that what fuels a crowd can also fuel culture change.
The Pointe: Stages to Wildflowers
The Pointe musical trio offered a simple, scalable, and powerful idea: reinvest a slice of festival profits into restoring the grounds with native blooms and habitat. If every festival did this, the impact would be massive.
“Festivals could allocate a part of the profits to come back to this very field that we’re in, plant some flowers, plant some things that will help pollinate, the bees need flowers, they don’t need grass, they need flowers. If music festivals put a little back on their profit back into the park to plant flowers, to help biodiversity, that’s what need is biodiversity, it's all about that, the earth is getting less and less diverse”
Johnny Stimson: The Power of Imagination
Johnny Stimson from Dallas, shared how imagination, and the courage to take the first scrappy step, can open unconventional paths and lead to a career aligned with meaning.
“Make a poster about it. If you have any idea, make something that looks official, looks legit, and you might find yourself playing at ACL if your thing is music. Put a little first step into an idea and sometimes it takes you all the way.”
That spirit is the heart of Plant Futures: encouraging students and creators to follow their curiosity and let purpose lead the way.
From the Grounds: Food That Fuels People and Change
Blenders & Bowls: Nourishment to Dance
Four years in, Blenders & Bowls keeps drawing the longest lines because the offer is simple and powerful: a refreshing acai bowl.
“Out here in the sun, you want something that makes you feel good and actually nourishes you. When you are dancing all night, you need food that is nutritious and refreshing.”
- Charlene
In the heat, people want food that helps them feel good, recover, and keep dancing. Charlene’s pride in serving healthy, fresh food speaks to a shift in festival culture toward choice that is plant-based, refreshing, regardless of dietary preference or allergies. When the healthy option is delicious and easy to find, crowds choose it, and that choice becomes a habit that follows them home.
Skull & Cake Bones: Progress Over Perfection
Yas from Skull & Cake Bones has been showing up at ACL for over a decade as the festival’s only fully plant-based vendor, showing that culture change doesn’t always arrive with a bang but often takes persistence and patience
“It’s not about perfection, it’s about progress… if you choose plant-based once a week, that’s also a win… you grow into it, and you find your people, and you do it together.”
- Yas, Skull & Cake Bones
Her advice to students and first-timers captured the weekend’s spirit: progress beats perfection. Start with one plant-based choice a week, celebrate the small wins, and do it with a supportive community. That’s how habits stick, and that’s how food systems shift: from joy and community, not from judgment.
By making plant-based food “accessible, delicious, and fun,” Yas has single handedly shifted the ACL food scene into a platform for climate action, simply by offering and showing the deliciousness of plant-based food that nourishes your soul while you dance. The lesson? Culture changes when we lower the barrier to entry and raise the sense of belonging.
What ACL taught us
Defaults drive culture. Make plant-centered food the standard, and norms follow.
Practice compounds. Small steps, by artists, vendors, and fans, become habits that travel home.
Community lifts courage. Creativity plus supportive systems turns intention into impact.
At Plant Futures, this is our north star: create environments where the meaningful choice is the easy choice. Festivals like ACL showed us how quickly culture can shift when better options are visible, tasty, and inviting. The work starts with one poster, one bowl, one set list, one refill - and then, suddenly, you look up and you’re here.
- Samantha Derrick, Executive Director, Plant Futures Initiative
