New to the Festival will be the Biodiversity, Good Food and Green Garden Area featuring family friendly activities like making bird boxes and feeders, learning about extinct species and bringing back to life a huge dinosaur made from plastic bottles! For the more traditionally minded visitors, we’ll be having workshops on woodworking, willow-weaving, bee-keeping and organic gardening. There’ll be displays of mini sensory, biodiversity, bog and climate change gardens with gardening and wildlife experts on hand to give advice about how to create your very own wildlife garden and grow your own organic fruit and veg. For the kids there’ll also be the chance to make bird masks, willow stars, or a willow wig-wam as well as join in a nature treasure trail around the park to learn about the wonderful range of plants and creatures that live in the park all year round. Our treasure trail will end in a mass planting session where we’ll be planting lots of butterfly-friendly plants and presenting the winner with a ladybird ‘house’.
This year’s Festival will be the most child-friendly ever with a wide range of activities for youngsters. There’ll be dramatic and funny story telling performances from the amazing Viper Arts duo. With face painting sessions, games, nursery rhymes, dance and energetic workshop activities for kids there’ll be something for everyone!
If quieter activities are more your thing, why not come and make some jewellery, badges and key ring holders as well as pretty gift bags to put them in with our Save the World team. Origami expert, Lip Lee will be joining in the fun with kite making and paper folding activities for all the family.
Come along to watch our green fashion and beauty show. Featuring a parade of the most fashion-conscious ‘real nappy’ babes in town and outstanding green and ethical clothing from our wide selection of green clothing stalls – it’ll be a show you can’t miss! Our Green Fashion and Beauty area will showcase outfits made of organic or recycled materials, cloth nappies, fair traded, hand crafted, vintage and specialist second hand clothing. Not only that, visitors will be treated to a range of interesting workshops showing how to make jewellery, felt hats, bags from pillow cases, fantastic perfumes and much, much more.
Meanwhile the Green World Stage will welcome an eclectic mix of international musicians, poets and dancers on the Saturday and Sunday will see the stage transformed into the traditional festival line up of top class acts including the Bagdaddies, Maybe Myrtle Tyrtle, Caravan and the Lazy Lizards. If you feel inspired by any of the performances, then why not join in the spin off workshops showing you how to do contact juggling, break dancing, beat boxing, musical theatre and much, much more!
This year’s Healing Area has been greatly expanded to include workshops and activities promoting healthy lifestyles. With yoga, meditation, children’s art therapy and Pilates activities there’ll be plenty of opportunities to both relax and exercise the body and soul! Back by popular demand, will be a host of Complimentary Therapists giving cheap rate taster sessions - including herbal remedy specialists. But remember - for a chance of trying out our range of healing therapies - you’d better be quick off the mark! Our healing sessions are always hugely popular and get booked up quickly!
Have you ever tried to break a world record before? Well now’s your chance. Come and join us in our attempt to break the world record for knitting the largest piece of material! This amazing event will be a charity fund-raiser too so why not get stuck in. Not only that we’ll have amazing workshops showing you how to spin wool, make wood sculptures, turn wood and make recycled jewellery from broken jewellery and old beads with a bead loom.
For those interested in local history we’ll be having Westgate Past presenting a wonderful selection of their photos and personal stories of interesting historic characters.
Another newcomer to the Festival will be our Low Impact Living and Renewable Energy Area. The nationally acclaimed Low Impact Living Initiative will be coming to Newcastle for the first time with their road-show demonstrating natural insulation products and renewable energy systems and for those who want to buy some of the products on show there’ll be stalls selling solar panels, wind turbines, ground and air source heating systems, and green electricity. Featuring workshops on how to make wind turbines, solar thermal panels, a green living roof and solar powered toy cars there’ll be plenty to do.
The Madhatters Café will showcase an eclectic mix of family friendly acts including songs and stories for toddlers, political music and much, much more. Not only that, there’ll be workshops making pirate masks to help make you make your mark with the Children’s Parade!
Back by popular demand will be Radio NE1 FM broadcasting live from the site. DJs and presenters will be interviewing visitors and playing a stomping range of music to listeners.
Saturday’s Festival will feature a children’s parade around the park accompanied by kids wearing masks, hats and costumes they’ve made during the day and the Bangshees drummers – a sight not to be missed!
A solar powered cinema will be brought to the site by our amazing Star and Shadow Cinema crew. Featuring a mix of adult and child-friendly films, there’ll be plenty to watch and see.
20% of the UK’s green house gas methane emissions in 2002 came from kitchen, garden and other waste which was rotting inside landfill sites (Defra). This could be prevented if householders composted their kitchen and garden waste instead of binning it.