Booking opens for the Climate & Biodiversity Festival community events

Residents can now book tickets for Bath and North East Somerset Council’s inaugural two-week Climate & Biodiversity Festival which takes place 13 – 26 September.

The council is co-ordinating a programme of face-to-face and online events, which will enable people to connect, learn from and inspire others on reducing carbon emissions and restoring nature.

Councillor Sarah Warren, deputy leader and cabinet member for Climate and Sustainable Travel said: “We’ve all got a shared responsibility to tackle the challenges of the environmental crisis, so it’s great to see so many community groups and organisations from across Bath and North East Somerset organising events that we can showcase.

“This is a collaborative event to help inspire and connect organisations, residents and communities and because there is so much being done at a community level across our district, there is a huge variety of events listed in the programme, many of them free to attend.”

Residents keen to get outdoors can visit the emerging Community Garden in Broad Street Place, Bath, join a Plant and Tree ID walk from Twerton to Bath City Farm, or take part in the world’s first 48-hour continental BioBlitz.

Tree lovers can visit the tiny forest at Lyncombe Hill Fields, or Forest of Imagination’s living forest at The Egg, a sound and light fantastical outdoor indoor installation.

A mixture of online and in person webinars and panel discussions will showcase how schools are taking action on climate issues, talk about how to deliver and fund environmental projects, and outline the relationship and tension between wasted food/food surplus and household insecurity.

Keynsham and Saltford Churches Together are running an event to discuss the actions available to individuals, businesses and government to avert the worst effect of climate change with panellists from the Soil Association, Avon Wildlife Trust, Triodos Bank and Bath and West Community Energy.

The Hight Street Hub at 15 Cheap Street, Bath will be hosting several drop-in sessions: Climate Outreach hub will advise on positive action you can take in your daily life and the council’s Energy at Home team can discuss making your home more efficient, the Solar Together West of England Scheme, or help to identify what funding is available to you.

If you want to start taking effective action alongside a small group of neighbours or friends, sign up for the online Eco Together workshop which will take you through a well-researched list of impactful activities.

The festival will enable the district to link with the national debate ahead of two significant international environmental conventions taking place this autumn, the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) in China in October and the UN COP26 conference in Glasgow in November.

The mass-participation art project, Moths to a Flame, encourages people to create ‘moths’ to send to the COP26 Conference in Glasgow in November.  

Using a moth as a metaphor for our relationship with energy, the project aims to make 20,000 moths and record messages for an installation at COP26.

Groups, organisations or families can get together to create simple hand-crafted moths from plastic milk bottles to join the exhibition and as part of the festival we will be displaying the locally made moths together before they get sent off the Glasgow.

You can find out more and sign up for all the festival events at https://beta.bathnes.gov.uk/climate-biodiversity-festival-events