Back to The Future Expo

The event was a huge success and attracted several hundred people throughout the course of the day. There was a fantastic range of stalls and demonstrations on the day including Native Tree planting, Biodynamics , Organic Gardening, chook raising, composting, Permaculture, Sustainable Living campaign, Marineland Wake Up to Waste, a good range of renewable energy providers wind and solar, alternative health options and sourcing good local food for health. The 350 climate change action group also came along to raise awareness of the 350 campaign and encourage people to take action locally. This year is international year of fibres and Heather is an expert on spinning, dying and natural materials. This formed a central part of the Expo and it was amazing to watch the intergenerational skills sharing throughout the day of knitting, felt making and spinning. There were also flax weaving demonstrations outside.

Duncan Kinnear presented a talk on Peak Oil and talked with people about community currency schemes.

There were some good live music performances and plenty of Hawkes Bay sunshine to ensure the day went well and was a lot of fun. The emphasis of the day was on skills sharing, increasing knowledge and local sourcing . We also wanted to show people the fun and positive ways changing our behaviours can be and how much of an increased sense of community we could generate if we did more of local networking and skills sharing, growing food, reducing consumption, being creative making and revamping clothes and crafts.

People signed up on the day to receive more information and become more involved and I have contacted all these people to find out what they would like to see more of and how they would like to be involved.