Climate Awarness Family Fun Day

This exciting festival incorporating performers from a wide array of cultural backgrounds and climate action and awareness, will be part a nationwide campaign, Great Big Green Weekend and will take place on Sunday 14 June.

The Climate Action Community Fun Day, will be located in Hornfair Park, a resource not widely used until two years ago when GFMA and Friends of Hornfair produced the first the Hornfair Park Festivals. The festival will bring communities together through young people playing and active role in the planning and the production of the festival, with children form local schools performing and taking part in the free workshops prior to the festival.

This festival will focus on climate awareness and action through the arts, with a day of live music, dance and theatre from some of the countries most effected by climate change and with links to communities in the Royal Borough of Greenwich from Nigeria, Nepal, India, Vietnam, Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo. 

These artists would not only be performing, but would talk briefly about the effects of climate change on their countries. They would also be commissioned to write material appertaining to the festivals core values. A new, Solar Song and Dance from GFMA Records local singer/songwriter, Jo Girdlestone, will be commissioned. Jo has a background in youth theatre and was commissioned by Royal Museums Greenwich to write a song for their Sound & Vision Project and has worked with RMG Collection Centre on a music and arts project funded by RBG Arts Funding. She  will work with children from Cherry Orchard and Fossdene Primary Schools for three sessions, prior to the festival. She will compose the climate action song and record a backing track for the song, in local recording studio in Woolwich, Ad-Royce Studios. The children will perform the song at the festival. 

There will be songs for a Brighter Future (Climate Action Songs) from Quaggy Community Choir. The festival will open with the Chinese Dragon Ceremony by a the Mayor. The workshops supplied by SELCE include: Eco Games, Beginners Guide to Refit, Employment Opportunities in the Green Energy Sector and Change to Save Workshop. 

They will also produce and provide an interactive art installation, Eco Your City, this will involve children and adults working with the artist to add to the installation, ideas that they feel could improve life with the ever changing climate and how it will effect our daily lives. This insulation will be part of a larger project to feedback to governments and other bodies on how to improve people's living conditions with the uncertain climate future we have. GFMA will provide six free children’s arts and crafts workshops and activities with the focus on the environment and cultural heritage relevant to and linked to counties represented at the festival. The Green Man (Jack in the Green) theatre workshop, another commissioned new work, will take children on journey back in time, with the tradition of Jack in the Green welcoming spring. This will consist of storytelling, mask making and a parade with the children following the GFMA Green Man, acting out some of the traditional aspects of the story, accompanied by a group of local folk musicians.