Nottingham Green Festival is a one-day, 100% vegan, off-the grid festival that has been run by volunteers here in Nottingham for the past 27 years. Somehow I'd never heard of the festival until this year, when I volunteered to help run it!



I say help run it, I had quite a small part to play as I didn't come in until late June, and mainly focused on the brand new speakers area that we ran for this year. For the first time Nottingham Green Festival had talks from various people from various disciplines talking about the future of our planet and local communities. We also had our "Have your say" wall and "Pledge on a hedge" which gave people the opportunity to say what was on their mind about the environment as well as giving a pledge to do their bit! Some of the pledges were... interesting, but there was a lot about giving up plastics, taking reusable items, driving less, recycling better and more! And I loved the idea of having the tags up on the hedge, I mean it looked really pretty too!

The atmosphere of the talks was really lovely too, it was people genuinely wanting to learn and be a part of making the world a better place, which was really lovely to be a part of. I was nervous for facilitating one of the talks, expecting the worst, but there really wasn't anything to worry about.


I'm happy to say this section was a big success! And we definitely need a bigger tent for next year! I'm also pretty happy that I kept this little speakers area running relatively smoothly throughout the day, dashing into the main festival to get food and take pictures every now and again.

There are a lot of pictures in this post, as a heads up!
 Speaking of food, I think there were a lot more people than either the organisers or the food stalls had anticipated because almost all of the food stalls had run out of food by about four or five pm. With Mocky D's and Veggies being the last two standing, and both with a consistent queue of about 40 people throughout the day. Sadly that did mean I didn't get to eat all the glorious food I wanted to, but I am sure I'll be seeing a lot of the food stalls at Sneinton Vegan Markets over the next few months so I'm not too sad.
Along with quite a lot of food and our lovely speakers there were also lots of stalls doing food swaps, selling hand made and zero waste items, plants, and more! Plus a lot of information tents, and a whole lot of music. I didn't get to fully immerse myself in this side of the festival but from walking around it seemed like everyone was having a pretty good time.

The bandstand had people sat round it in big groups, and was a really nice place to sit and watch the bands... I mean that is was it was designed for!
One thing I was really impressed with was waste management, looking around the festival there was a lack of rubbish left everywhere that you would hope for at a green event, and right by the bandstand people were sorting all of their rubbish into sections, with everything from food waste, to crisp packets, to bamboo utensils ready to be composted or recycled. It was so refreshing to see people making an effort to sort their rubbish and learning about it all!

Finally back up to my little speakers area, was where Extinction Rebellion (XR) Nottingham were based, who were running banner making and printing activities to get people ready for the upcoming protests (including today's earth strike!). As well as having a rejuvenation culture workshop in a quiet corner.

I made myself a patch ready to wear for the next events, and especially enjoyed seeing the kids walking around with their banners.

 Well, I think it's safe to say this year's green festival was a success! I spent 11 hours of Sunday running around and making sure things were running up in the speakers area, as well as thoroughly enjoying myself and though I can for sure say that I was absolutely exhausted at the end of it all, I really enjoyed it! As I said earlier, I had a really small part of putting all of this together so also thanks to everyone who has consistently made Nottingham Green Festival an amazing, and pretty unique, event.

So if you were there, I hope you enjoyed it. And if not, I might see you next year?