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Music, Food, and Green Inspiration from WOMAD

Posted on July 29th, 2015

photo 3 We have been enjoying a great weekend at the WOMAD (World of Music and Dance) Festival. Despite heavy rain on Friday and Sunday, we were lucky enough to be able to stay relatively comfortable thanks to our new family member – our 1987 Romahome campervan, Brian the Snail.

We loved the music from all corners of the earth. South African trio ‘The Soil’, and ‘The Rubber Duck Orchestra’ from Manchester were two of our favourites – do give them a listen. And congratulations to the  Porthcawl Brass Band at WOMAD who put their hearts – and colourful headgear – into their performance at the Molly’s Bar tent!

photo (22)Festival goers spanned the generations, toddlers oblivious to the weather splashing in the mud, brave wheelchair users challenging the weather, and more grey hairs to be seen than any other festival we’ve been at – made us feel quite young! Children loved the laid back safety of the communal village atmosphere – and the world of activities laid on for them.  The outpourings of warmth and enthusiasm of the audiences were remarked upon, band after band saying they had never enjoyed a better reception.

photo 2 (42)One of the sponsors of WOMAD is Ecotricity, who organised an inspirational debate. Chaired by the green-hearted Jon Snow of Channel IV News, it was addressed by four young people, who had won a competition to be there as Young Green Britons, supported by their adult mentors. It was so encouraging to hear the passion and knowledge with which these youngsters spoke about the threats posed by climate change and human damage to the environment. The need to bring education about these topics into schools – in a fun and interesting way, that was not just geared to exams but meaningful to each of our lives and that of the planet – was a major concern. The importance of sustainable food production, moving largely to locally grown organic fruit and vegetables, and reducing meat and fish intake to a minimum were points on which we heartily agreed.

Doing this substantially reduces the pollution and carbon emissions from the production, packaging, processing, transport and wastage of our current system of global food production. It also has great benefits to health. Plant food naturally contains water so that it is hydrating without using up additional water supplies, an increasingly scarce resource. Eating kale, for example, rather than feeding it to cows, is a massively more efficient way of providing nutrition – as our raw food teacher Niten once said to us, cutting out the cow is ‘cutting out the middle man’!

Its worth looking up the Low Carbon Diet espoused by the University of Cambridge Colleges Low Carbon Meals Scheme.   According to the Sustainable Table, organic farms emit up to two-thirds less carbon dioxide than industrial farms per acre. More carbon is also retained in the soil.

We loved the good organic food on sale at many of the festival outlets, as well as stalls selling fresh coconuts and watermelons (more on this in my next blog!)

photo 5 (14)More than just music, festivals are a remarkable phenomenon of creativity, egalitarianism, human rights, green ideas.  Congratulations to my old colleague Dan Jones from Amnesty International who ran a children’s workshop on Human Rights and Fairy Tales  – and helped create the fabulous procession – in which he appears to have been the model for Neptune!

The next festival we will be attending is Raw Fest on 14-16 August in the New Forest – hope to see you there!