Green Fayre at the Workhouse

We are making plans for the next Green-fayre at the Workhouse.

Dates are proposed for 18th-19th September 2010.

Making a wooden spoon on a shaving horse

The event will follow a similar format as to last year, with entertainments in the Workhouse venue on the Friday night, 2 days of practical crafts workshops over the weekend with music, dance and spoken word performance on Saturday and Sunday night.

Kids area and activites, fun and games, arts and making, child friendly space to explore.. circus workshops and more, Family camping in our beautiful field.

With a special Welsh Cider bar and local produce cafe. A key theme of the green fayre is celebrating local produce and the more local the better, Wales hosts a great variety of growers and makers and we will be bringing you a range of the best of local produce

basket weaving with willow canes

We are passionate about rebuilding local economies, and bringing people together to get creative and to rediscover the fun in the simpler things in life.

There is a great tradition of self reliance at the Workhouse, much of the work the previous inmates were engaged in was in fact looking fter themselves, cooking, growing food mending their clothes etc. We want to embrace and celebrate that spirit of self reliance and of communities working together.

If you would like to help or get involved with this event then please do get in touch.

Art workshops, creative fun..

All these photos are from last years event, which was the first time we had held it, and with support of a small grant fromGLASU.

The Green Fayre is all about taking part, in some way, rather than being a spectator. The first thing is to get the kids busy, and we strucutred arts workshops in the Workhouse gallery, which was conveniently located next to the tea and cake cafe so parents watching their kids work could have a cuppa at the same time,

Informal music workshops and performances

For those who dont know the Workhouse yet, it is an interesting mixture of the old stone wards, separating 4 different courtyards, each with a distinct character of its own. We encouraged musicians to mingle with the visitros to crtea  good atmosphere and also to entice people in to an infromal jam session or workshop. we love working with the Cetic Cowbois, a great band from Ynys Mon, who are Workhouse favourites, Their high energy infections folk music provided a bit of a sound strack for the weekend

A Wood Mizer, mobile saw mill on display at the Green Fayre

We had crafts of all shapes and sizes on show, hopefully to insipre and involve people into making getting involved themselves. The kids all had a chance to make a bird box, weave  a basket, make a spoon, card and felt wool, learn how to ceilidh dance, and loads more.

This felt rug was made at the Green fayre

This beautifual felt rug was a result of the weekend, numerous people carded and combed wool for it then when it had been carefully payer up and the pattern made , it was tolled up around a think stick, and protecked by tarpaulin, we all danced and on it and kicked it.. make all the fiebre knot together. they say it takes a whole community to make  felt cover for a yurt, now i know why, it was a lot of work, but the result was defitiely worth it.

Local trees for sale at the Fayre

Keeping on teh green theme it was a chance to get together for lots of green practitioners and network and plan for the future. welshtrees.co.uk here are a local nursery growing welsh povinace trees for hedging replanting and forestry.

Courtyard cider bar and impromptu music session

Its all about ambiance really, creating a relaxing space for people to come together in and share and ejoy each others creativity, adn local produce. I would love to see the Green fayre develop as a local produce fayre, and chance for local producers to sell stock at teh end of the year. For this and toehr reasons that is why we are moving the event to later in teh year this time. £rd weekend in september. hopefully the weather can still be really nice then, and it gives more time to plan and make produce to have to sell there. I am very keen to hear from any welsh or borders producers who would like to get involved and help develop this event.

Tim and Toby from changing lives with one of the Masquerade crew

Changing Lives with BBC Wales
It was huge fun to work on the BBC Wales Changing Lives – Going Green series which was filmed at the Workhouse in August and broad cast later in the year in Oct/ Nov as a 6 part series.

The Davies family who were the subjects of the series were tremendously good sports and rose to the challenge of all the various tasks we set before them, confronting them with lots of sustainability and green issues, and idea.  The series has been well recieved and certainly got a lot of people thinking and talking about it. It wa a happy coincidence really to have the cance to film at the fayre itself, it provided a wonderful backdrop to the Davies families green challenge.

The Workhouse is very keen to develop its green credentials and it working with Sector39 to host permaculture design, yurt building and all sorts of courses with a sustainability theme. These and Green Fayre, plus there is of course a local produce/ low impact ethos to all our events but this is our chance to showcase these aspirations. The Green fayre, the TV series and the courses programmes are a delberate attempt to involve more people and to inspire people to get involved and also realise that there is lots of fun to be had learning new sills and building a bit mroe resliance into our local economy.

Filming the compost toilet discussion for Changing Lives

Download Changing Lives Going Green

For anyone who missed it the series is available for download here, each episode is about 200mb

Episode 01: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YWTX11VH
Episode 02: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Y1YJ972S
Episode 03: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=B0KUYJJQ
Episode 04: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=02MOK2C2
Episode 05: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Z05O0IJ7
Episode 06: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XZ2B18YV

We are planning to build on last year’s successful Green Fayre with a  Local Produce Event for September 2010.

Local Produce, Food and Cider Fayre

tug of peace

With all the green crafts workshops, and activites that we all enoyed at the Green Fayre.

Family camping, music, ceilidh and cider!

Music and dancing and lots to do for the kids.

crafts stall at the Green Fayre

We are pround to announce we will have our dedicated Welsh cider bar at the Green fayre.. with some of the best local cider, perry and juices available. Bill makes his cider in the heart of the Cambrian mountains at over 1000 feet above sea level near the sources of the Severn and the Wye. The sweet fresh juice is pressed in welsh oak pressess and left to ferment in in its own natural yeast. It is left to ferment for up to 18 months – producing a unique cider with an uncommonly rich depth of flavour. Contains no additives, sulphites of sugars!

As well as running an apple tree nusery Bill is also a stained glass maker and you can see some of his work at http://www.greatoakglass.co.uk/

We are thrilled to welcome tools for reliance Cymru to the Green Fayre..the organisation restore old tools and implements and makes them available to development projects across the developing world. Here’s a section from their website

Tools for Self Reliance groups collect old and unwanted hand tools; we clean, repair and sharpen them and send tool kits to grass roots community groups in 6 African countries, but mostly Tanzania at  present.

TFSR Cymru is one of 70 TFSR groups in the UK, based in Crickhowell. We are a registered charity, and work towards a more equitable sharing of the world’s resources.

TFSR Cymru are a bunch of over 50 volunteers, men and women aged 14 to 81.  We meet in our fully-equipped workshop where we repair and renovate hand tools in their thousands.  The tools are donated by individuals, or collected by a wide variety of other organisations from across Wales. We have been fairly successful at collecting, but we still have a shortage of certain items, especially anvils and other tools for blacksmiths.

Could you work without tools? In the past 22 years we have sent over 330 tool kits (each valued at over £1,200) to craftsmen and women in rural communities of Africa. Tools mean work, and the chance to shape the future is just as important to a young person in Tanzania or Ghana as in Britain.

Volunteers are always needed to join us in Crickhowell, or at one of the 6 other TFSR groups in Wales. Men or women any age, bring along your skills, or come and learn how to handle a hammer. There’s always plenty to do from cleaning and sharpening tools, to making and packing crates. There is always somebody around to help show you what needs doing.

www.tfsrcymru.org.uk

As part of the BBC Wales Green season, there will be a film crew present at the Green Fayre event recording footage for a green lifestyles documentary. The Workhouse and project partners Sector39 are really pleased and excited to be working with Presentable TV and hope you will all be tuning in in November when it goes to air.

The Workhouse is hosting a film crew and subjects for a 10 day period and the Green Fayre will form a significant part of the back drop for  the programme.  We have been working closely with the editorial team to ensure the resulting 6 part series conveys an accurate picture of the Workhouse project as well as the environmental principles it embodies.

They are particularly interested in the crafts, and doing side of things, as well as some of the characters and personalities involved with the project and making it all happen and want to portray what is going on there in a positive and constructive light.

We really hope noone will be put off by their presence and assure that they have no intention other than making a genuinely interesting programme set amongst the creativity and inventiveness of the Workhouse community. If you do not want to be filmed in anyway please make your self known to us and we will be happy to ensure that you are not.

I’ve led workshops at Glastonbury Festival, The Big Green (when it happens!), Buddhafield Festival and Dance Camp Wales, as well as teaching community choirs…. the more the merrier! anynumber can attend Bee’s singing workshops… they are fun and uplifting experiences. Please come along and enjoy singing with us at the Green Fayre!

http://www.harmonybee.co.uk

Follow the link to see the Green Fayre on theBBC Wales website

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/mid/sites/arts/pages/greenfayre.shtml

We are pleased to link up with the ABSURD.co.uk, The alternative culture magazine for North Wales. First for news on spoken word, music, art, poetry, literature, philosophy, theatre and live events. They are helping put together some spoken word and poetry performances at the GF weekend, and there are still openings for more involvement… get in touch..

Ever popular Circus performers and workshop leaders from Anglesey will be here at the  Green Fayre, this time they will be offering workshops in making your circus equipment. Creative fun for all and a chance to learn a new skill.

On the saturday we are also delighted to announce we have workshop facilitators and performers F.L.A.M.E.  already mentioned below, who will also be offering workshops in juggling, diablo, hooping and other practical fun skills like that. Saturday night they will be showing us how to do it.. with their own fire show set to music as a highlight of the evening.