Networks
A great strength of the Bristol city-region is the huge number of local organisations who are working together on a wide range of urban sustainability projects – from local government authorities; through business and non-profit organisations; to grassroot community groups and individuals.
Big Green Week Programme Details
by Paul Rainger
01 February 2012
Bristol’s BIG Green Week 2012 outline programme details reveal a packed schedule of world class talks, art, and entertainment.
Peter Madden, Chief Executive of Forum for the Future, who helped develop BIG Green Week said:
“Bristol’s BIG Green Week is a celebration of green ideas and action which aims to challenge and motivate people to engage with the sustainability issues we face. It is also a fantastic opportunity to hear some world class speakers, get involved in some fun activities and enjoy the buzz in one of the UK’s greenest, most dynamic cities.”
And organisaers of the nine day festival say to watch out for more confirmed speakers and event news over the next few months.
Saturday 9 June:
Love Life, Love Local Food – the UK’s biggest ever Farmer’s Market (in association with the Soil Association) radiating out from the famous St Nic’s covered market hall in Bristol’s old medieval centre.
Sunday 10 June:
Love Life, Love My Bike – the first-ever World Electric Bike Championships with a time trial race on Park Street in the centre of Bristol. The world’s top manufacturers, with celebrity riders, competing for the top crown for electric bikes; plus a gravity powered downhill ‘soap-box’ Go-Kart Grand Prix, and electric bike ‘taster sessions’ for the public.
Monday 11th to Friday 15th June:
A daily stream of events, including:
7.45 – 8.45am The Morning Muse (Green Talk) Colston Hall
– an eight-minute breakfast time provocation and open discussion (also to be broadcast online).
9 – 10am Thought for the Day, Bristol Cathedral
– a chance to reflect on the spiritual side of our connections with the natural world.
10.30am – 12pm, Wonders of the Planet, at the Watershed
- a week-long film programme screening some of the BBC’s greatest hits produced by Bristol’s world famous Natural History Unit over the last 40 years.
12.30 – 1.30pm Festival of Green Ideas Colston Hall
– a lunchtime think-a-thon, with short talks followed by Q&A.
2 – 4pm Film Documentaries & panel discussion Watershed
6 – 7.30pm The BIG Green Lecture (Schumacher) Council House
- our BIG daily daddy of an event, with keynote guest speakers, with virtual link ups with speakers overseas. Plus live poetry or music. Webcast live by Bristol City Council.
8 – 10pm The BIG Green Event (various venues)
– music at St Georges, comedy at Colston Hall, poetry at the Bristol Old Vic, Green Talks at the Arnolfini.
10 – Midnight Late Lounge (various venues)
- hosted by the bar of the venue for that evening’s BIG Green Event (above). Have a drink, mingle and discuss.
Saturday 16, Sunday 17 June: the Festival of Nature
- Europe’s biggest free nature festival held in a tented village across the Bristol harbourside (with schools’ day of the Friday).
Sunday 17 June: Bristol’s Biggest Bike Ride
- this annual traffic-free family ride, organised by Bristol City Council, starts and ends at the Festival of Nature giving a huge finale to BIG Green Week.
Bristol Big Green Week’s outline programme released
by Paul Rainger
19 January 2012
Britain’s leading green city, Bristol, will be hosting the UK’s festival of environmental talks, art and culture in June.
The outline programme, released today, for Bristol’s BIG Green Week 2012 which runs from 9–17 June – reveals a packed schedule of world class speakers, art, entertainment and family fun, kicking off with a celebration of local food with the UK’s biggest ever Farmer’s Market on Saturday 9 June, followed by a Sunday showcase for electric vehicles.
From Monday to Friday (11-15 June), BIG Green Week will host a daily stream of speaker events to explore the latest green thinking, including the Morning Muse, Thought for the Day, the Festival of Green Ideas, a daily Big Green Lecture and evening entertainment at the Big Green Event.
Wildlife lovers will have the chance to see some of the BBC’s Natural History Unit’s greatest films, with daily showings at the Watershed; there will be art on display at the Royal West of England Academy; BIG Green Week exhibits and activities at the Arnolfini, Colston Hall and the M-Shed; a packed programme of Fringe events; and outside art and audio installations will transform the public space.
The week will culminate in the Festival of Nature on 16-17 June – Europe’s biggest free nature festival held in a tented village across the Bristol harbourside, and Bristol’s Biggest Bike Ride on Sunday 17 June when thousands are expected to join the family ride. Read the full press release here to find out what’s in store for June 2012.
Bristol’s Green History
by Paul Rainger
06 December 2011
The environmental campaigns, organisations and community action that have taken root in Bristol over the last forty years give the city a special place in the history of the UK’s green movement.
I’m biased of course, and not because I have played a big part in that history, because I haven’t. No, I’m biased because the current exhibition of the work of the Schumacher Institute to document that history has chosen to include a quote from me in foot high letters on an eight foot wall.
But declaration of personal interest aside, over 100 people were interviewed for the Bristol’s Green Roots project, a heritage lottery funded project of the Schumacher Institute to document the history of the environmental movement in Bristol.
A year in the making, the project’s archive which will now be stored with Bristol Record Office, contains publications, leaflets and promotional material from early environmental groups in the city including Bristol and Avon Friends of the Earth, the Urban Centre for Appropriate Technology (now Centre for Sustainable Energy) and Windmill Hill City Farm.
The project co-ordinator, Emmelie Brownlee, has brought together the stories in a publication called Bristol’s Green Roots. There is also an exhibition at The Create Centre, including the afore mentioned quote, which tells some of the stories collected.
Emmelie says “the amazing thing about this project is the incredible wealth of organisations, initiatives and community groups that have developed in Bristol over the last forty years. The project looks at the successes, set-backs and achievements of Bristol’s environmental movement, and how local people have worked tirelessly for decades to protect and develop local green space, local food movement, the city’s public transport, cycling provision and recycling.’
The exhibition is at The Create Centre (free entry) until spring 2012, and the publication is available from The Schumacher Institute, Foyles Bookshop in Cabot Circus, the Arnolfini Bookshop and Blackwells on Park Street.
Getting a Taste for Sustainability
by Paul Rainger
29 November 2011
Bristol people can get a taste for sustainable living in the city ahead of the start of the Schumacher Institute’s ‘sustainability toolkit’ course in January next year.
The Bristol Schumacher Institute is giving free taster sessions for the course on 6 December and 3 January at St Nicholas House in the city centre.
The taster sessions and course are led by the Institute’s Martin Sandbrook and the toolkit is accredited as a post-graduate certificate by Bath Spa University.
The Sustainability Toolkit is designed to provide useful knowledge and practical skills for meaningful work – about different perspectives, about sustainability, about how people learn, about how groups work, about systems thinking and what this really means.
To book a place at a free taster session, or for more information about the course, just email: martin@schumacherinstitute.org.uk
Schumacher, Green Jobs, Renewables, Earth Music – welcome to the UK’s Green Capital!
by Paul Rainger
07 October 2011
A glance at the Bristol diary for the next few weeks reveals just why the city makes a good claim to be the UK’s Green Capital. And why if any UK city can become home to an ambitious festival of big green ideas and events it is Bristol.
The Schumacher Centenary Festival (8th & 9th October)
ETSUK Environmental Trade Show (13th October)
Renewable Futures Conference & Green Energy Awards (9th November)
Earth Music Bristol concerts (18th to 26th November)
First up this weekend, the Schumacher Centenary Festival has a stellar line up of Saturday speakers, and is specially expanded for this centenary celebration year to include a large evening concert of world music and a packed Sunday programme of workshops and films.
Next week, the Environmental Trade Show UK is being hosted by the University of the West of England on 13th October, with 100 stands and 2000 visitors showcasing the latest innovations in low carbon business. This trade show looks set to become one of the most important events in the UK’s green business calendar, thanks to organisers Low Carbon South West already being the largest trade sector body in the UK for the low carbon goods and services that are driving green job growth in the South West.
November 9th sees RegenSW’s annual Renewable Futures get together of the world leading cluster of renewable energy businesses that are headquartered in the South West, bringing together key government officials, decision makers and energy companies. Another stellar line up of energy sector bigwigs for an event described as “a catalyst for progress” by the Crown Estate, and so important for the renewables sector that even Forum for the Future’s magazine Green Futures is a media partner.
Also in November (16th – 26th) a unique, ground breaking cultural event Earth Music Bristol is being curated by St. George’s Bristol in association with BBC Radio 3. A new kind of festival devoted to the celebration of centuries of musical responses to the living world and the forces of nature. As well as live concert broadcasts, there will be wildlife exhibitions, meet the artist events and even a live camera and sound feed from the nearby Slimbridge Wetland Centre, the Bristol based world leading experts in wetland creation and management.
Putting the SPark into World Green Buildings
by Helen Burley
20 September 2011
The Bristol and Bath Science Park (SPark) is one of 25 venues across the UK joining this week’s celebrations for World Green Building Week.
The SPark One event, supported by Low Carbon South West and Forum for the Future, will be showcasing its sustainable design, including on-site renewables, with 200 sq m of solar PV, a solar thermal hot water system and biomass boiler.
The science park has been designed as a hub for the region’s science and technology businesses, developed by the Quantum Property Partnership, with £40 million from the South West Regional Development Agency (SWRDA).
Sustainable building has been racing up the agenda in recent years as architects and developers see the potential for cutting carbon and enhancing the natural environment through cutting-edge designs and efficient building techniques.
This year’s World Green Building Week, organised by World Green Building Council, focuses on green buildings in the new green economy – making SPark One’s emphasis on entrepreneurial innovation a prime example.
Paul King, the chief executive of the UK Green Building Council explained: “The built environment is set to play a crucial role in the transition to a low carbon economy, offering almost twice the cost-effective carbon mitigation potential of any other sector.”
As well as playing a crucial part in cutting carbon, sustainably-designed buildings can have huge benefits for the people that use them. SPark offers its clients green surroundings; easy transport access, with cycle paths, footpaths and charging points for electric cars; as well as a cafeteria, sports centre and meeting facilities.
The buildings we work in, and the way in which use them, are an important part of sustainable cities – and this year’s World Green Building Week focus provides inspiration to think differently about the role work spaces play.
Time to Bee Inspired
by Paul Rainger
29 August 2011
When I was little, honey was simple. It came in jars, bees made it and certain bears got stuck in their homes if they eat too much.
Today, in less innocent times, the sudden collapse of bee populations, and with it our whole food system’s reliance on their pollination services, have catapulted these amazing creatures into the environmental frontline.
Fortunately the bees’ suffering at the hands of our environmental degradation has struck a chord with the public. Beekeeping in Bristol, and other urban areas, has rocketed over the last five years.
Now HoneyFest, an event taking place at the University of Bristol Botanical Gardens on 3–4 September will allow visitors to see inside a demonstration hive, with live bees behind glass.
The Bristol Beekeepers’ annual honey show will also provide a wide range of information on keeping bees, and on honey and beeswax products, with experts to explain the ins and outs of beekeeping for the curious, or potential beekeepers.
Dave Maslen President of Bristol Beekeepers’ Association, says: “Urban beekeeping has really taken off in the last five years, which is great news both for the bees and for all the species of plants that benefit from pollination. Beekeepers come from all walks of life but share a passion for learning and passing on our knowledge about one of nature’s most fascinating creatures. Public interest is reflected in the fact that our membership has doubled in the last five years but we always welcome and support new members and our annual Honey Show is a fantastic opportunity to find out whether beekeeping is for you.”
Celebrating Sustainable City Living
by Peter Madden
10 June 2011
Today is the first day of Bristol’s newest festival – Good Living Week - celebrating sustainable city living in the UK’s green capital.
Friday is all about green jobs. The Mayor of Hannover is in Bristol with a trade delegation for a Sustainable Energy Summit between the two cities looking at low carbon retrofit of buildings, deployment of solar photo voltaic cells, neighbourhood district heating systems and emerging wind energy technologies.
But Good Living Week has something on for everyone between now and 19th June. Here’s an article about the whole Festival by Peter Madden, Forum for the Future’s Chief Executive, that appeared this week in his monthly ‘Planet Bristol’ column in the Bristol Evening Post -
Bristol is celebrating Good Living Week, actually ten days of exciting events, talks and practical demonstrations to inspire you to live and work more sustainably.
This is a new festival, built around some well established events such as Bristol’s Biggest Bike Ride and the Festival of Nature, and will also have lots of smaller-scale things going on, giving visitors an opportunity to hear from, talk to, and join in with some of the hundreds of local projects that make Bristol the premier place for experiments in greener living.
My organisation, Forum for the Future, has helped pull all this together. And we’ll be running two particular strands, both of which are free. On Saturday 11th June, you can learn about growing your own fruit and veg with the ‘Get Growing Trail’. Bristol’s vegetable growers are opening their community plots and garden gates for a special open day of tours, advice and family fun. There will be more than 20 community gardens, allotments and orchards across the city to visit.
Then, on the weekend of 18/19 June, on the harbourside, we’re helping run a Contemporary Sustainable Living Show. Set in the popular Festival of Nature, we wanted to give you a place where you could see a range of cool eco-goodies that help you live a greener lifestyle. So come on down and get great ideas and inspiration for your own home. Straight from Olympia in London, this will be the first large scale show of its kind in the Southwest.
Assuming Good Living Week is a success, we want to run it much bigger and better in 2012. Ideally, we’d like it to be for sustainability what the Edinburgh Festival is for theatre, comedy and the arts. Too many environmental events I go to leave me depressed and de-energised. I’d love to have a week where people could get fired-up by all the great stuff going on in our city, and have an opportunity to sample the best in green ideas, products and culture from across the world.
I know Bristol has some great festivals already. But there are not many that people actually travel to come to, that fill our hotels and restaurants and bring new jobs to the city. Nor do we have many festivals that are known nationally – or indeed internationally.
If Edinburgh, Cheltenham and Oxford can run festivals like this, why not Bristol?
My ambition is for us to run a green festival of international renown, that supports our economy, that brings new people and businesses here to see what we are doing, and that builds the reputation of Bristol as the leading city in the UK for sustainable living.
Sustainable Melbourne talk resilience with Bristol
by Paul Rainger
03 June 2011
A leading thinker on urban sustainability, Professor Chris Ryan, who is Director of the Eco-Innovation Lab at the University of Melbourne, is teaming up with Forum for the Future to give public talk on resilient cities in Bristol on Monday 6th June.
Chris also runs the ‘Sustainable Melbourne’ initiative which is twinned with Forum for the Future‘s Sustainable Bristol programme via the international Sustianable Cities Network. Prof Ryan’s recent work has focused on the resilience of cities in the face of the coming environmental challenges, and his Bristol talk will look at the practical steps which cities can take to survive – and thrive – in the future.
The discussion will be chaired by Peter Madden, Chief Executive, Forum for the Future on Monday 6th June 12.30 – 1.30pm on The Third Floor, Bush House, 72 Prince Street, Bristol.
The event, organised by Bristol’s Festival of Ideas, is open to the public and free, but pre-booking is essential via the Festival of Ideas booking form here.
The practical steps which cities will need to take to design resilient green infrastructure for a future of unprecedented resource scarcity and environmental change present a big challenge.
Unless we take radical steps to increase the resilience and sustainability of critical infrastructure, access to vital systems and services is at risk. Prof Chris Ryan‘s research suggests a distributed approach to system design offers many benefits over traditional infrastructure models.
Research and case studies strongly suggest such an approach can:
1. Increase the physical resilience of infrastructure
2. Foster social and institutional flexibility and innovation
3. Reduce the environmental footprint of production and consumption
A strong and renewed interest in distributed systems is being fuelled by access to sophisticated technologies – particularly information and communications technology. This is allowing people to invent and adopt new ways to produce, interact and consume, that are increasingly localised and networked.
Over the next few decades the way people obtain their food, water and energy will undergo a major (r)evolution.
One pathway sees people no longer relying on industrial production units hundreds or thousands of kilometres, or even continents, away. Instead they will source a greater proportion of essential resources, goods and services from within their ‘neighbourhood’.
Energy (principally electricity) is already showing signs of this transformation in most developed economies, with innovative arrangements of gas, solar, wind and biomass generators positioned throughout every region, backed up by new storage systems and some remaining large-scale centralised power stations.
Developments in the water and food sectors seem to be following the same path.
This evolution sees a significant switch in people’s role within the economy and in their identity as citizens; moving from one of passive consumption to a more active engagement in production and exchange of economic and social capital.
In this future, people will no longer depend on contractual arrangements between corporatised utilities and government to ensure quality and security of services. Everyone will identify in one way or another as a ‘prosumer’ – being involved (either individually or through community arrangements) in the production as well as the consumption of part of the resources, goods and services on which they depend.
Bristol’s Good Living Week is here in June
by Paul Rainger
31 May 2011
Bristol’s first ever ‘Good Living Week’ is set to burst into life across the city from 10th to 19th June with a series of events celebrating sustainable living and working in the UK’s green capital - see the Good Living Week website for full details.
Good Living Week has been established by Bristol’s Green Capital Partnership and Forum for the Future to provide a focus for sustainable urban living and green businesses. We need to face the future with optimism and forethought, inspiring change and leading by example. We also need to find ways of living that make better use of our limited resources. Bristol has a lot to offer. We also have a lot to learn.
Good Living Week will showcase sustainable city living in Bristol. Here’s the introduction to the week written by Suzanne Savill in the Bristol Evening Post -
Green will not be a colour but a way of life in Bristol when the first Good Living Week takes place in the city next month.
Sustainable city living will be celebrated with events including a summit on sustainable energy, a locally produced food trail, bicycle workshops, and opportunities to view homes with solar panels.
Organisers are hoping that Good Living Week will be a pilot for an annual event that will help to boost Bristol’s green image, and strengthen the city’s bid to become a European Green Capital.
Darren Hall, Bristol’s Green Capital Partnership manager, says: “It’s about raising the profile of Bristol as the UK’s leading city for sustainable living.
“This can create all sorts of opportunities, ranging from bringing together communities to boosting the local economy.”
Paul Rainger, head of Sustainable Bristol City Region for Forum for the Future – which aims to make the Bristol area the most sustainable in the UK – believes the event could become the green equivalent to the Edinburgh Festival.
“The hope is that Bristol will be able to do for sustainability what Edinburgh does for the arts,” he says.
“This is very much a pilot, and the aim is that the event will develop over the years and there will be more green groups doing their own thing, so that there is a sort of ‘Bristol Fringe’.”
Bristol’s Good Living Week will actually last longer than a week, running from Friday, June 10, to Sunday, June 19. It will be linked to the Festival of Nature on Bristol Harbourside on June 18 and 19.
The event gets its name from a book called Bristol – A Guide to Good Living, which showcases green activities within the city.
It was produced earlier this year by local publisher Alastair Sawday and the Bristol Green Capital Momentum Group, which aims to help Bristol achieve European Green Capital status.
Bristol was the only UK city to be shortlisted as Europe’s Green Capital for 2010 or 2011, and is preparing a new bid for the title.
The Good Living Week events have already been included as satellite activities in an extended European Green Week, and a delegation from the German city of Hannover, led by the city’s mayor, will be visiting Bristol.
The programme has been designed to appeal not only to those already involved in sustainable living, but also to those who are less engaged.
A community hub will be open at the Create Centre, where advice will be given on matters ranging from growing vegetables in front gardens to green volunteering.
A new coffee table style book published by Sawdays, called Bristol: Inspiring Change, will be launched during Good Living Week.
Events during Bristol’s Good Living Week include:
Friday, June 10 Bristol-Hannover Sustainable Energy Summit on innovative energy efficiency and micro-generation solutions.
Saturday, June 11 Live Local Weekend showing how to live efficiently and minimise environmental impact. Including the Get Growing Garden Trail showing 24 local food growing projects, and Green Doors open event showcasing solar projects.
Sunday, June 12 Bristol’s Biggest Bike Ride
Monday, June 13 Conference on Leadership for a Zero Carbon World.
Tuesday, June 14 Green Talk, featuring the city region’s most innovative green thinkers, leaders and achievers.
Wednesday, June 15 Sustainablah: a demonstration of the Bristol’s Creative Industries skills in supporting the green tech sector to achieve job creation and growth.
Thursday, June 16 The Business Case for Sustainability. Workshops exploring how businesses can improve efficiency, in partnership with Sustainable Business Breakfasts
Friday, June 17 Festival of Nature Schools Day, involving 1200 local young people.
Saturday, June 18 to Sunday, June 19 Festival of Nature which is expected to attract 25,000 people. This will include the UK Aware Show, an exhibition of sustainable living that is being held outside London for the first time.
For further information about Good Living Week go to www.goodlivingweek.com.
The Bristol Evening Post will also be publishing a special supplement with details of events during the week on Wednesday 1st June, so make sure you pick up a copy.
West of England Carbon Challenge
The West of England Carbon Challenge is a free network for organisations across the region that commit to making a collective cut in emissions of at least 10% over four years. The network uniquely joins together pledges set by Business in the Community’s May Day Network, 10:10, or Green Capital, and those organisations who just have their own internal targets.Refit West
Refit West is a consortium of environmental groups, led by Forum for the Future, who are working to support home onwers to increase energy efficiency and reduce their fuel bills with whole house retrofits.
Eat West
Bristol Friends of the Earth have created a local food guide for Bristol. Entries in the directory are written by real shoppers with a passion for local food.