With support from the Julia R. Brown Fund, Abigail traveled to Miami to conduct field research for her capstone project, surveying festival‑goers and documenting Ultra Music Festival’s sustainability initiatives. In this post, Abigail illustrates insights and connections she gathered from this experience — and how they will shape her capstone and future work in climate advocacy and outreach.
As part of my MAS Climate Science and Policy degree, I am conducting a year-long capstone project on any climate focus of my choosing. I decided to dedicate my research to the music festival industry, focusing specifically on Ultra Music Festival in Miami. With the help of the Julia R. Brown Funds, I was able to travel to Miami in March for the 2025 Ultra Festival. While in Miami, I had the opportunity to meet my partner at Ultra, Milly Milton, and other stakeholders with the festival. I met their Mission: Home sustainability team and talked about my survey. I also had the chance to get more people involved in my survey.
For two of the festival days, I walked around the festival site with a QR code for my survey. I went up to different festival-goers and groups and tried to convince them to take 5 minutes to complete my survey. I had stickers (provided by Milly) to hand out as incentive to take the survey. The other incentive people had to take the survey, also provided by Ultra, is the chance to win a 25th anniversary merch package. Finally, being at the festival, I was able to take pictures and document what sustainability initiatives were at the festival, the energy and power generators, as well as other aspects of the festival that would contribute to carbon emissions or reductions.
This trip has been essential to my capstone project because I was able to get a sense of the festival in a way I never would have if I had not gone in person. Additionally, I was able to cultivate the relationship between Scripps and Ultra by meeting my connections in person and fortifying that partnership. The most striking knowledge I gained from attending Ultra was getting live, in-person feedback about my survey. It was interesting to notice that women were more willing to take the survey than men, and people found the survey to be too long for the context of being at the festival. It is not surprising that people thought the survey was long when they were currently at the festival, trying to walk around and enjoy it. Something really cool that I learned was that out of the 7 stages at the festival, two of them were completely off the grid and using renewable energy.
This experience has given me the skills to network and develop working partnerships, do social science field work, be a strong communicator, and conduct climate advocacy and outreach. These are skills that are vital to my future career in climate and sustainability. This has been one of my first real-world experiences in fostering working relationships and collaboration with cross-discipline organizations, so this is an essential skill that I can take with me in the future. With this experience, I also learned that I really enjoy the social aspect of science and would love to work in advocacy or outreach in the future. Seeing and talking to people is something I really enjoy and am good at, so I know I would have a very successful time doing something similar post-grad.
The Julia R. Brown fund made this trip possible and I am so grateful for that. This experience has meant the world to me and will be so beneficial for my capstone project.
Blog content and images provided by Abigail Shultz – thank you!