Highlights of 2011 part 2

This picture shows a couple of members of The Opera Group, with whom we collaborated on a project to take art out onto the streets and engage with people ahead of their performance at the CBSO concert hall of Seven Angels.

One of the great perks of volunteering for Birmingham Friends of the Earth is the opportunity to get a free ticket to a festival in return for working shifts on our property lockups. The money raised from this is the main reason we can afford to employ a member of staff working on campaigning for all the environmental changes we seek in Birmingham.

It may not be the most glamorous or fun part of campaigning, but responding to consultations is really essential to developing our reputation as a serious organisation whose views carry weight. As well as the core strategy, we have responded to various transport consultations, including on HS2 and aviation and the National Planning Policy Framework. Copies of these can be seen on our website.

The award that we got was largely for the work done by our Faith and Climate Change project, whose funding was unfortunately cut before we received this. There is work under way to develop an even bigger project building on the foundations created to do something across the whole region now.

We won photo of the year for this shot from last year's Santa Parade:

Richard made a totally original acceptance speech that I would love to see taken up by one of the winners at the Oscars next year!

Rossiter's and LOAF did us proud with the food and our volunteers cooked up a storm on the Barbecue for this annual fundraiser that also acts as an awareness-raising event for the benefits of organic food.

Over the summer, we took some time to pause on the active energy campaigning and have a look around the city at what is already happening in the city. We drew up 15 case studies and this information is now proving very useful as we battle cuts to renewable energy subsidies and support for our new campaigns.

In September, for In Town Without My Car Day, we did something practical this year. 5 "Bike Trains" converged on the centre of Birmingham with commuters heading to work. The atmosphere was great and we hope to have inspired a few people to repeat this in 2012. We'd like it to become a regular event to get people building up their confidence for cycling in Birmingham.

Of course, what made it the perfect start to the day was that after burning off all those calories cycling in to work, people were then given a free breakfast to give them the energy to get through to lunch courtesy of three lovely local independent coffee shops.

Glorious Glasto!

Every Glastonbury, Birmingham Friends of the Earth make their way down to the festival armed with a coach full of volunteers and lots of tea.

Birmingham FoE provide a free property lock up service and those of you who have been to festivals before will know how extremely rare it is to get anything for free there!

The lock up service allows all of the Glasto goers to leave their valuables in the safe hands of BFoE until they want it back. There are lots of lock ups situated around the site for the different camping locations and you can leave absolutely anything; keys, money, chairs, trolleys etc. They are open for business at 8:00am on Wednesday until 4:00pm on the Monday and they are staffed by the volunteers all day and night.

We also give out lots of loo roll, as you can see!

This year was my second Glastonbury with Birmingham Friends of the Earth. While I was there I worked a total of 24 hours, but still got to do and see so much. Though there's nothing about it that feels like work, everyone is there for the same reasons and it creates a really great atmosphere within the camp. Volunteering with BFoE at Glastonbury was great fun; I meet loads of fantastic people, watched some brilliant live performances and helped raise money for future BFoE campaigns and events!

Rosie Cervelli

New festival for our lockups crew

This year, we are pleased to announce that we're adding Shambala to the list of festivals where we are running lockups.

This year Sustrans have teamed up with Shambala to offer festivalgoers guided rides from 8 cities and towns around the UK. As part of their commitment to green travel and cycling, the rides are being subsidized, so it's a great way to get there and get fit.

Shambala is set on a beautiful country estate, in the heart of the English countryside. With stunning lakes, lush flat fields, woodlands, and meadows. Over the bridges find healers waiting to massage and pamper fun fatigued limbs. Lounge around in hot tubs sipping cocktails or swim in the lake amongst giant lotus flowers.

The festival caters for families, as they say; "Shambala has long been known as being one of the most family friendly events with a wild side. We know what families need - we all have kids! This year we have a dedicated quiet family camping area a stones throw from the car parks, a toddlers tent, baby bathing, one of the biggest kids areas known to the festival world, and bedtime stories with cocoa in the campsite yurt."

To further boost their green credentials, the event "is 99% powered by wind sun and waste veg oil. And has been judged the greenest outdoor event by Industry Green and A Greener Festival." Also, they pride themselves on being completely independent till the day they die! So you will not see any adverts trying to sell you stuff you don’t need or want on site!

I'm sure our volunteers will enjoy working on site and we hope that festival-goers will find our service to keep valuables safe a positive addition at this and all the other festivals we're at this summer.

Moseley Folk Festival 2010 - A cow's gotta do ...

Here are some pictures from the folk festival where we were doing a stall to promote our Fix The Food Chain Campaign and getting people to Join the Moovement:

Washout

One of the perils of campaigning at outdoor events is the weather and boy was that the case today. A brave team of us made it all the way out to Kings Norton for the 3 Estates festival, erected our gazebo and stood under it as the rain lashed down.

Even with our canvas cover overhead it was almost impossible to keep any of the campaigns materials from getting soggy unless they were in plastic boxes (luckily they were thanks to the foreward-thinking Campaigns Coordinator who had provided just the things). After a couple of hours one of the organisers came and put us out of our misery, saying that the amount of water was becoming a health and safety issue, so everyone had to start packing up.

We did get a few letters signed and hopefully made a good contact with a residents group down there who are very interested in getting us along to talk to their members, but this will not go down as one of the most successful days campaigning I've ever done.

Thanks to the volunteers who came along (and those who were half way there when the call went out to turn back and head home). A memorable day, if not for the right reasons.

Back from Glastonbury

The Glastonbury festival is absolutely unique. It is the one festival where the music is almost incidental to whether or not you have a good time. There is music everywhere and most of it you just stumble upon. Blur was a major highlight, but apart from them, just wandering around was the best thing about it for me and all my plans to see this band or that went out of the window (or would have done if I'd had any windows.

The four lock-ups run by Birmingham FoE volunteers did a great job of keeping people's stuff safe and providing miles of free loo paper (although most people gave us very generous donations for it) to desperate punters. I haven't found out how much we raised yet, but the indiocations are that it was a very good total and will again provide invaluable financial assistance for our group. A huge thank you to everyone who came along and especially to the organisers who made it possible.

We also had some very fetching masks and displays about the food

chain campaign at the stalls and got some postcards signed. Personally, I would have liked to have been able to do some

campaigning away from the business end of the lock-ups. Greenpeace had a whole field for doing that with a mock airport and model Sipton village. I also had my face painted blue by Oxfam for their climate change campaign and saw green police everywhere, which was fun. Hopefully, next year we can get in on the act and talk to people about our campaigns a little more.

It was still very much worth going and gave everyone a great break, while being able to do something useful too.