EA Sustain grew out of EA Festival, the culture festival founded by Joanne Ooi. 

Besides a long career in marketing, art and culture, Joanne founded environmental NGO, Clean Air Network, in 2009, before moving to the UK. Clean Air Network was established to tackle Hong Kong’s biggest public health problem, air pollution, and remains the most influential NGO on that subject in the city.

In 2021, Joanne founded EA Festival, an ideas and performing arts festival featuring top thinkers in art, culture, literature, media, history, poetry and music. Since inception, EA Festival has garnered kudos for its adventurous and variegated programming combining very different subjects and art forms. (EA Festival Edition No. 3 will take place at Hedingham Castle during the weekend of 10th and 11th June 2023.)

It was Joanne’s original intention to include The Environment as a content pillar within EA Festival. Indeed, the programme of the inaugural EA Festival in 2021 included two events about the environment. The first was a panel discussion entitled ‘The Ethical Carnivore’ featuring Louise Gray, author of the book of the same title, alongside a panel of experts discussing the role of livestock in regenerative agriculture. Ecofashion was the subject of the second event – a conversation between supermodel and soil advocate, Arizona Muse, and sustainable fashion scholar, Sass Brown. Both events met with a great reception and signaled a strong demand for environmental programming. However, it was not possible (mainly because of time constraints) to include environmental programming in Edition No. 2 of EA Festival, which took place in June 2022. By that point, it became clear – from the standpoint of both zeitgeist and sheer quantum of information – that The Environment warranted a weekend all of its own. 

Thus, EA Sustain was born.

The programming of EA Sustain falls under three pillars, each one a crucial component of rural sustainability – 

• The Environment and carbon emissions; 

• Culture, with a big and little ‘c’, inspired by the environment. Consumerism is part of the little ‘c’ and a crucial lever of business transformation. Culture with a big ‘C’ illuminates and celebrates the transcendental beauty of nature.

• Entrepreneurship: We need more ambitious and higher quality entrepreneurship so that local and regional economies can flourish and we can reduce our reliance on services and products from London. Moreover, it is great brands and services in East Anglia that will make the region a compelling destination for new businesses and their employees. 

Like EA Festival, EA Sustain is an event that seeks to improve the lives and futures of people and businesses in East Anglia through cultural transformation and growth.