Beans on Toast, the Dalai Lama and a whole lot more..

In case you missed us we were at Glastonbury running our lock up.

One of our fab volunteers, had such a great time she wrote a blog all about it. By Fran Romberg.

Glastonbury Festival is an event that needs no introduction. It’s a euphoric fiesta of music, arts, friendship, protest, peace and happiness that attracts hundreds of thousands of people of all different ages and backgrounds. Although the Foo Fighters unfortunately couldn’t make it we at the Brighton Peace and Environment Centre could! It’s the biggest event on our calendar here at Brighton Peace and Environment Centre and we were out in force providing coach services from Brighton and London and property lock up’s at the festival. Here’s our run down of our experience at the festival.

Our coach service using the Big Lemon was as popular as ever and this year we launched our service from London, which was a fantastic success! The Big Lemon Coaches are the perfect alternative to travelling by car as it’s more eco-friendly to travel on one big coach than lots of individual cars and the Big Lemon coaches are run on recycled chip oil. Taking care of the environment is one of the central themes of Glastonbury Festival and we aim to encourage people to continue this outside of the festival too.

We also help run several of the property lock ups on site. It’s an extremely useful service where festivalgoers can drop off their valuables and we take care of them- for free! Leaving you to have some good old worry free fun! At the lock ups you can also get free toilet paper, challenge 21 wristbands to use as ID at the bars and charge your phone for the bargain price of £3. Our team of volunteers did an incredible job and helped make many people’s festival experience stress free so a huge well done and thank you to all those involved.

The rest of the festival also featured many events, activities and experiences, which fit in with our ethos at BPEC. The Green Futures Field featured a plethora of activities and information dedicated to creating a global consciousness for solving environmental problems including up-cycling workshops, a solar powered stage and a permaculture garden.

The Left Field tent was host to a variety of radical speakers, debates and musicians talking about important issues such as TTIP and feminism. Pussy Riot was there and was even introduced by our favourite songstress turned activist Charlotte Church!

The Greenpeace area was also a must-visit, revolving around an ocean theme highlighting issues facing our waters such as over fishing, pollution and conserving the Great Barrier Reef. It was home to a giant trawler that really put into perspective the destructive capacity of these boats.

Shangri-La featured some excellent political artwork this year as the hedonistic haven hosted an election theme. Beans on Toast gave an excellent political performance there that is worth checking out if you can.

Last but not least of course was His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself turning up to give two talks sharing his wisdom on compassion, friendship and peace. If you missed it there are links available online.