Much like a lot of the country right now I have been working incredibly hard recently to find things to fill my time, my spare time has been all about crafts and campaigning. About how we can get back on the horse, so to speak.
We had no option but to cancel our March Fair, the fair had a theme of sustainable fashion, we had a great line up of eco, plastic free, sustainable businesses.
After having to make the devastating decision to cancel the fair everybody at Friends of the Earth Chester and District and Eco Communities felt so bad for all our independent businesses as their main source of income, fairs, festivals and makers markets were cancelled.
The idea started out as a sort of QVC thing where I would interview the makers while they showed off their goods, but I couldn’t quite get my head around how we could pull this off properly.
I’ve kept an eye on other virtual fairs and they seemed a tad soulless, just an event date and time which culminated in Facebook posts during the event time, and or website links.
Our Sustainable Fairs, as well as supporting local businesses looks at ways to teach people more about sustainability. Sustainability focuses on meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
The concept of sustainability is composed of three pillars: economic, environmental, and social—also known informally as profits, planet, and people.
Many events like this take place in Bristol and London , but it’s time to put the North West on the map…plus the great thing is that anyone from anywhere can be involved in the virtual world and already my range of speakers are from all over the UK, plus its much kinder for the environment as well.
I put a message out about the fair without really knowing the best online options, particularly with all the security issues around Zoom, plus the logistics around lots of room codes and passwords, so when I started advertising it, the how wasn’t quits locked down.
I did know I wanted to do more than the format of the other fairs, then I watched some of Jen Gales Sustainable(ish) Festival POP up. Jen kindly allowed me to pick her brains around crowdcast and next thing, it was all go.
It only took about 30 minutes to sign up, create a test event and go live. Then on Saturday with half a day of messages, planning sheets and social media I had a draft program with just one or two items to finalise.
So we are nearly ready to get the Online Event Brochure together and start getting those events keyed into Crowdcast.
The event starts on Thursday 4th June, then we come together to celebrate World Environment Day, Friday 5th June with a day of activities and speakers, culminating with an evening party.
If you’re interested in joining in with our Sustainable Fair sign into the Eventbrite HERE.
