Featured in this issue of The Spark, Bristol Solar City (BSC) are the winners of our Best Green Initiative award. Made up of a group of local organisations united by the goal of seeing Bristol become the UK’s solar capital, BSC aims to install 1GW of solar PV locally by 2020. A project that has proved very popular with Spark readers is the Golden Hill Community Garden in Horfield, Bristol. Says Spark reader Jo Sampson: “My children have enjoyed really fabulous holiday activity days and events which have taken them back to nature. With lots of things to do including growing, pond dipping, making pizzas in the frog oven, it is a brilliant local community resource and deserves this accolade for the sheer hard work the people involved have put in.” Also mentioned in dispatches was Folly Farm, a stunning 250-acre nature reserve close to both Bath and Bristol, owned and managed by Avon Wildlife Trust. Winner Light Box is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company (CIC) that works with a variety of support services in Bristol. Through workshops and signposting services its three-year Happiness Project promotes a step-by-step approach to wellbeing. “Thank you for nominating Light Box for a Spark award,” says Lucy Duggan. “We’ve been doing this for nearly four years now, have had over a thousand people take part and heard some amazing stories of change along the way. The people who come to our workshops never stop amazing us and we are still enjoying it so much. “
www.bristolsolarcity.com www.thegoldenhillcommunitygarden.com www.follyfarm.org
Dr Gabriel Scally (above) who, you might recall, was interviewed in The Spark earlier this year, becomes our inaugural Local Hero. Dr Scally is the former Regional Director of Public Health for the South-West of England who left the Department of Health after becoming disillusioned with planned changes to the NHS and gained a reputation as a whistleblower, campaigning against what he saw as ‘the demolition of the NHS and the public health system’. Lots of nominations in this section, with George Ferguson (see interview, page 5) Bristol’s first elected, independent Mayor coming a close second to Dr Scally and local food heroes The Haughton Family – Barny (Bordeaux Quay/Square Food), Phil (Better Food Company/Community Farm) and Liz (Folk House Café) – who collectively deserve honourable mention.
Community Conscious is a not-forprofit project based at Hamilton House in Bristol, offering a range of complementary treatments, massage, mindfulness practice and yoga to people in Bristol who face issues of isolation, unemployment and family breakdown. “It means so much to us to be picked for the Holistic Health Award,” says Nealey Conquest of Community Conscious. “We are proud to have received an overwhelmingly positive response from our clients so far and are committed to making a difference to the lives of many other disadvantaged groups across Bristol.” Similarly, Your Community Clinic works throughout the city providing low-cost treatments for people on low incomes. There were many nominations in this section, but the Sam Buxton Sunflower Healing Trust (which supports cancer patients and their families by providing funds to employ complementary therapists in the NHS and in hospices) and Penny Brohn Cancer Care – the local charity which helps people to live with the impact of cancer through physical, emotional and spiritual support designed to work alongside medical treatment – both rated highly.
Lucy Duggan, Light Box Leading UK dance movement psychotherapy (DMP) practitioners Dance Voice provide a dedicated training centre for masters level and national certificate courses. Our second runner-up, Mindfulness-West, offers courses, workshops, and one-to-one mindfulness coaching in Gloucestershire, Central Bristol and points beyond. www.wearelightbox.co.uk www.dancevoice.org.uk www.mindfulness-west.com
who have we missed? Tell us! mail@thespark.co.uk
We received an amazing number of nominations for Green Gathering, the family-friendly festival where performance meets permaculture, with one reader singling the festival out for ‘being resilient and important enough to come back after being shafted, bankrupted and silenced by the authorities (and) for creating a space where activists can play, bond and share skills, thus making the world a better place.’ Your other favourites included the ‘amazing’ kid’s workshops at Buddahfield, the alcohol-free festival which allows people to practise and learn about meditation and Buddhism, and the child-friendly films and workshops put on by Bristol’s Watershed arts centre. “They theme them, so it’s always really interesting,” a Spark reader tells us, “For example you might get a shadowpuppet film followed by chance to create your own shadow animation afterwards.”
This was another hotly-contested award, and by far and away the greatest number of nominations which came in to The Spark office were for Shambala – a number of people also put the festival forward for the Best Green Initiative award, thanks to their Bring a Bottle campaign, where organisers banned the sale of bottled water on site. Loved and renowned for its fancy dress, join-in, feel-good vibe, some of the festival’s followers were cautious about sharing their best-kept secret. “Shambala is really thrilled to be nominated in the first Spark Awards,” says Sidharth Sharma Creative Director of Shambala Festival. “We have always had great respect for the ethos of The Spark Magazine, and always love reading the inspiring stories, showing us what sort of planet we could be living on if we put our minds to it.” The biggest event of Bristol’s year also had a big impact on Spark readers: the Gromit Trail – raising funds for Bristol Children’s Hospital – was a huge success and brought hundreds of thousands of extra visitors to the city in search of the Aardman Animation dog. Finally, another wonderful enterprise that our readers brought to our attention is the Copa Sandino/Copa Lucrecia Lindo two Football for Nicaragua events that have taken place in Bristol each May since 1987. Latino food, drink and music flows all day and this year the men’s tournament raised £1,500 towards the building of a pre-school for under fives and the women’s tournament raised £500 for a girls football and personal development project in Nicaragua. www.shambalafestival.org www.gromitunleashed.org.uk www.latinamericainbristol.org.uk
www.communityconscious.org www.yourcommunityclinic.com www.cancertherapies.org.uk www.pennybrohncancercare.org
www.greengathering.org.uk www.buddhafield.com www.watershed.co.uk
Shambala-goers celebrate
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