It was amazing to be part of the very first VegFest Scotland in history this weekend and I braved Storm Desmond and flew up to Glasgow mid-storm with the aircraft thrashing around all over the place and the contents of the flight toilet smelling rather unpleasant from the rear of the craft due to turbulence (evidently lots of meat eaters on the plane!)
Anneka Svenska VegFest Scotland 2015
But once in Glasgow,it was evident to see that VegFest had picked a great Vegan centre, the SECC, as the numbers poured into the festival, £7,500 altogether over the two day festival which is pretty phenomenal for VegFest’s virgin outing to this part of the UK.
Anneka Svenska, Karin Ridgers and Founder Tim Barford VegFest Scotland 2015
I flew up with Green World TV to cover the Sunday and had great fun interviewing the Scottish Vegan stallholders and public. The market in Glasgow is huge for veganism and it was received extremely well.
Tim Barford played the guitar on behalf of Pig Freud who had sore trotters and was spectacular, a clad with sunglasses. Fellow band member Pappa Bear joined him on the harmonica. I caught up with Captain James Tea Cook, pirate of the carob-bean, take a look at his facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/CaptJamesTeaCook/ and also the bubbly and vivacious Karin Ridgers of Veggie Vision TV: http://veggievision.tv/
As well as filming a short documentary of the festival, Green World TV covered some of the talks and one which we covered was the reducetarian discussion which took place at the end of the day. Interesting that such a debate has taken off between the abolitionists (vegans who say that you need to go full vegan, no half compromises) and the reducetarians (vegans who believe that to reduce the amount of dairy and meat you eat is the way to embrace full veganism) My personal thoughts are that all forms of veganism is a HUGE bonus to the planet and anyone who makes the effort to follow this route, whether immediate or gradual is needed very much in the direction that the planet needs to be headed.
The next VegFest is VegFestUK Brighton in the Spring. To find out more about VegFestUK take a look at: http://www.vegfest.co.uk/