On a December evening as temperatures in Manchester dipped below freezing and a full moon peeped between high-rise blocks, sustainability communicator Jak Hill and Green Gathering director Em Weirdigan made their way to the UK Festival Awards venue - Escape to Freight Island.
In a post-industrial landscape, vegan food and bubbly were served to several hundred crew and organisers representing dozens of British festivals. Sharing a table with Elderflower Fields festival – shortlisted for the Community Engagement Award – and with the Beatherder crew as neighbours, Jak and Em swapped sustainability tips, backstage anecdotes and tales of trying to change the world through the medium of festival.
Shortlisted for the UK Greener Festival Award, The Green Gathering was in incredible company – Shambala, Cambridge Folk Festival and Greenbelt were also on the list.
“And the winner is... The Green Gathering!!!!”
Award sponsors A Greener Festival shared feedback and praised Green Gathering’s team for reaching beyond the festival to “...pass on knowledge and positively influence future generations and future professionals to create sustainable power generation systems” and highlighted how “All members of the crew appeared to live and breathe the festival’s Sustainability and Equality and Diversity Polices. This radiated out to the festival-goers and created the feeling of a safe space for all.”
Jak and Em were thrilled to receive the award – and thrilled that it was made from recycled wood, not perspex, as many awards are - on behalf of everyone involved in creating such a fabulous tenth anniversary Green Gathering festival this year.
Special thanks go to Charlotte and Paul from A Greener Festival, who diligently investigated our traders, production areas, solar generation plants and toilets to make sure we really are as Green as we claim, and to our co-ordinators who spent time explaining their parts in creating the magic.
Back at Freight Island, Jak and Em were rooting for Elderflower Fields and Beatherder to win awards in their categories. Neither were successful this year but their events sound fantastic.
For now we’re celebrating being the most sustainable festival in the land; in the new year we’ll be sharing plans for exciting new projects.
Em Weirdigan says:
“Winning this award is an inspiration to do more ourselves and also to encourage other events to use the feel-good aspects of festivals to positively impact the environment and society, now and into the future. I sometimes wonder why I've chosen to focus on something apparently frivolous, like a festival, but congregating together for outdoor fairs, markets, festivals, celebrations and ceremonies is key to community and humanity. We connect, in the moment, on the earth, in the perfect space and frame of mind for sowing the seeds of both joy and rebellion. Rebellion, and joy, and dancing. Join us.”
