Gift to Nature
an Isle of Wight conservation partnership
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Our work with the Isle of Wight Festival
For the Festival over the last few years Gift to Nature and friends have:
- Created and built and grown the Hive chill-out garden
- Constructed 100s of wooden hand-crafted bees
- Hand sewn 400 metres of bee bunting
- Formed floaty fairy wings
- Secured huge straw bales
- Co-ordinated a gaggle of decorated biffa bins that turn up year after year.
- Created 300 festival flowers (made from recycled/ reclaimed vitamin bottles!)
- Proffered much Info for festival goers on a wide variety of subjects:
-Wild bees
-Bee habitat
-Bee conservation
-Bee keeping
-What they can do for bees
-What the festival is doing to be green
-How great the Isle of Wight is
-General info about conservation wildlife
-Directions, assistance and general festival public information point - Provided an army of volunteers entertaining people in sun, wind and rain
- Commissioned benches made from wind turbines
- Delivered comfy nutshell seats
- Decorated miles of festival fencing over the past 5 years
- Provided picnic rugs
- Offered a bit of calm in the storm (literally at times)
- Litter picked to ensure the Hive remains the cleanest bit of festival ground there is
- Sent Bee-mail postcards across the globe
- Given away thousands of free wild flower seeds
- Communicated good festival eco-news to the world on Facebook and Twitter
- Offered shelter to all-comers when it rains.
- Supplied salvaged office furniture for the busy backstage
- Designed and produced artwork and interpretation to tell the festival eco-story
- Hosted European partners at the Hive promoting action for climate change and linking with the Weathering the Change EU project
- Given a home to the Bubble Earth – constructed and manned by our friends at Medina High School and commissioned by Natural Enterprise
- Reused and recycled everything we can lay our hands on for a sustainable festival including collecting up all the backstage and VIP plants and greenery and passing on to the horticulture classes at the Isle of Wight College.
And it isn’t all during those three (and a half) days, during the year Gift to Nature has:
- Helped The festival with the projects and actions for their Outstanding Greener Festival award including an Ecological Management Plan for the festival site itself.
- Worked with the Isle of Wight College to propagate rare Black Poplars for Festival site and plant them out there.
- Managed the island’s biggest colony of the scarce adders tongue fern in the main arena itself!
- Kept the festival Let it Bee campaign alive and well through bee conservation projects around the Island throughout the year
- Communicated the Festival’s eco-vision through the programme of Gift to Nature conservation work, keeping its environmental flag flying and rooting it in local projects
- Contributed to local and National Honeybee Research
Funded research into the Island’s Soft Cliffs internationally renowned for their invertebrate biodiversity. - Discovered, celebrated and managed the amazing Field of Hope bee reserve
With the Ecoaction Partnership we are working with with South East MEP Keith Taylor to make the Field of Hope and Let it Bee a template for European bee conservation schemes. - Connect the festival to a network of talented Island makers and artists via The Hive
- Spread the word about the good work of the festival to other events throughout the year
- Provide expert environmental advice on a number of (non bee-related) environmental areas
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