Party for The Planet Report

Participants at Party of the Planet learn about recycling the fun way – through junk band rhythms!

Aims and rationale

• To provide young people with easily understood information about climate change;
• To engage them in activities which encourage discussion, debate and an ongoing interest in the issue;
• To change their attitudes towards climate change and their ability to take action on it.

Target audience

The target audience for the Party for the planet were the lower end of our target age group, approximately 11 – 16 and families. The event was directed towards local young people from the Clapham, South London area. Careful consideration was made by the steering committee as to what activities and music would draw in the local young people.

We also wanted to attract the regular park goers and passers by so we had to ensure there was a mixture of activities were of different time lengths to captivate them for short periods and lure them in.

This was one event which especially challenged C-Change to assess what young people outside the Woodcraft Folk would enjoy. It was a healthy process to gauge what would attract our audience into attending and forced us to think outside our comfort zone and usual programme of outreach work.

Planning process

A small subgroup of the Steering Committee was established to plan this event in the early stages, with many more taking on specific roles towards the end of the planning process. It was especially nice to see the original brain storming ideas of the steering committee materialise on the day – showing that their commitment to the process was very valuable.

Many of the technicalities concerning the infrastructure and external human resources were carried out by project staff, with the steering committee working hard to bring together the interactive elements for the day. With the recruitment of many experienced outside practitioners, the detailed planning for specific activities were left up to them. Allowing the steering committee to oversee much of the day.

Party for the Planet needed much planning input for a relatively short delivery time of one day. Due to other C-Change events that were taking place in prime planning time some things were forced to be dealt with under short time pressure, this was not ideal but nothing was overlooked. But the pressure to deliver many different events was felt!

One area of significant debate during the planning process concerned provision of power for the event. Mains power was available at the bandstand but the owners of the site, Lambeth Council, could not provide data on a green tariff. Initially the planning group explored the possibility of using photovoltaic electricity generation to power the event. However the only systems which would have been large enough to meet the demand of the PA would have needed to be transported long distances by diesel lorries.

Eventually it was decided to hire a generator running on bio diesel. The planning group had serious concerns about the sustainability credentials of bio diesel but as others have appeared to be the lowest impact way of powering the event they decided to produce posters explaining the decision and setting out some of the issues around the production and use of bio diesel. Resolving this issue provided a good opportunity to extend the knowledge of the Steering Committee in relation to the relative merits of various fuels and the many "trade-offs" which are incurred in this type of decision-making.

The organisation of a free concert in a London park raised a number of health and safety issues for the planning team. Initial advice was taken from Lawrence Waterman, an experience that health and safety consultant, and this was incorporated into the planning of the event. Closer to the event we engaged a consultant to prepare a risk assessment and to act as health and safety manager on the day.

Publicity and media

The Battle of the Bands competition received extensive media coverage and Party for the Planet was often mentioned as part of the articles released. The two events complimented themselves in press releases and therefore we reached a large section of our youth audience through music focused media.

We were successful in getting coverage in local newspapers, events listings and local youth magazines, directly communicating to our target audience through our media coverage.

We were also very successful in turning the coincidence of Live Earth happening on the same day in London to our advantage by promoting the event as a ‘local Live Earth’. Whilst we were happy for our event to be seen as complementary to Live Earth rather than an alternative to it, this presented a number of positive media opportunities including an excellent article in the Guardian newspaper.

Implementation

Technical

Onsite roles were clearly defined with members of the C-Change team and Woodcraft Folk taking on event and site management, activity coordination, stewarding, stage management and technical support.

Most of the liaison with Lambeth council was administered by C-Change staff prior to the event. However Vijay Luthra, freelance health and safety officer, took over this role onsite.

A local Scout centre was used to prepare food for the café the night before.

Human resources

The event was planned and organised by a subgroup of the C-Change Steering Committee with support from the C-Change staff team. A large team of volunteers was recruited from the Woodcraft Folk to undertake the technical and stewarding tasks on the day, with many young people taking on important roles.

Several freelance artists were brought onboard to provide specialist activities along with performers for the main stage programme. Notable success was had with the involvement of ‘Get Cycling’ a bicycle road show and ‘Big Beat’ a performance and workshop running junk band. The Woodcraft Folk Edinburgh ‘Power Pod’ was also a visually striking and provided fantastic hands on climate change workshops.

The ease of the set-up and break down of the site was much helped by the south London Woodcraft Folk groups.

Muir Walker Medics Corps were brought in to assist with First Aid, however they reported only a few minor incidents. Brenda May Ramsey was onsite public relations, bringing press coverage to the event and coordinating interviews with various production companies.

Vijay Luthra was brought in prior to the event to write a risk assessment and as on-site health and safety officer.

A few external NGO’s and local groups were also invited to display information about their work.

Critique/evaluation

Numbers attending

Number’s attending the event were estimated at 3,000 people.

Publicity gained

? As the event was featured in major national newspapers the secondary level publicity had an excellent reach.

Effective things

The response on the day for help by Woodcraft Folk members shows the movements willingness to build more externally focused events. The responsibility that the C-Change steering committee undertook was significant and bound the project, showing everyone that the work we have done to empower our young people and the experience they have gained through organising previous events is invaluable. We should continue to train our young people with the skills needed to put on such events so that they can take on more responsibility and control at future events.

The atmosphere created by the programme of activities and selection of live music made it a safe and relaxed place to be. The majority of the activities were well attended with particular success with the bicycle road show.

The environmental impact of the event was low. We were able to run the power for the event using only bio fuel and solar power even though we required a high amount of energy to run the stage. Nearly all of the volunteers arrived by public transport and only limited car use for bringing equipment onto site was used. Very little materials were bought new, especially the craft area where things were recycled and re-used from scrap or left over from Global Village.

Weak areas

There were several scheduled activities planned for the day in the different zones, these were less successful than the drop in sessions. The reason for this could be the lack of clear advertising of the programme. Small leaflets were handed out but larger posters in more prominent positions may have informed a greater number of people.

Issues with H&S ?