Orkney Climate Festival - Getting Started with jonny Bennett
So, I thought I’d just write a quick blog about the Orkney Climate Festival, how it got started and where we are up to.
Following on from the Highland Climate Festival that took place at the end of June across the Highlands, orchestrated by the North Highlands and Islands Climate Hub and Highland Adapts. I thought I would get started on facilitating something similar for Orkney, so that we too could have a widespread celebration of the great climate action taking place here and provide the opportunity for further engagement and increased awareness amongst our communities.
The fundamental idea for the Orkney Climate Festival is that it is community led, meaning that it is community groups that are leading the events for the communities in Orkney and involved in the decision making and are therefore shaping the festival. The first step in making this happen was getting together a group of groups that were engaged in climate action, which wasn’t difficult to do, as all the development trusts and a number of community groups here are taking part in climate action in some form or another. So, along with the development trusts, community groups such as Greener Orkney, Stromness Museum, Incredible Edible Stromness and the Orkney Fair Trade Group, and with Voluntary action Orkney and Orkney LAG, we had regular meetings to discern the direction of the festival.
From this group, along with the support and blessing of Howie Firth from the Orkney Science Festival, we decided to host the Orkney Climate Festival to coincide and work in collaboration with the Orkney Science Festival, as there is considerable overlap between the types of events both festivals are intending to host. After the date was set, the rest of the groundwork required establishing branding that could be used for the festival to show cohesion across groups and creating a website space in which groups and individuals in Orkney can find information about the festival, discover what events are happening in Orkney, and find out how to get involved. All of these are now finished, with the logo creation taking by far the longest amount of time and effort (I think I made about 20 iterations in total). Please see below for some initial attempts at the logo, starting with “what was I thinking” and ending with the final choice.
So that leads us to where we are now; we’ve got more community groups, business and organisations involved in the development of the festival, and more events coming forward from said groups. We are always on the lookout for more groups, events, and involvement, so if you fancy getting involved, feel free to contact me on jonathan@nhclimatehub.co.uk or submit an event to our website here. The more the merrier. The deadline for submitting events is the 19th August, so please keep an eye out on our website for the final programme which will hopefully be released shortly after (or hopefully on) that date.
As an update, Jonny visited BBC Radio Orkney and gave a short interview about the festival and what you can expect. Use this link to listen back and skip to 3minutes 26seconds!
Ps. Here’s a poster.
