Super Summer Sundae
Right-o, we're massively behind with telling you tales of our summer adventures so in the next 24 hours we're going to take you on a whistle stop blog tour of our time in the field. If you can't be bothered to read it all, just look at the pictures! We hope they will whet your whistle and give you a feel for how pedal-power can work at festivals. Let's start with the super weekend at Summer Sundae...
We were over the moon and a little overwhelmed truth be told when we arrived on site at Summer Sundae in the heart of Leicester, as we discovered we had our very own village green to bedeck with pedal-powered paraphernalia.
We worked with the brilliant and fearless (we discovered as he scurried up a ladder into an unsteady tree) Joseph Fairweather-Hole on a pedal-powered art and discovery installation called the Top Hat Tree, a nod to Francis 'Tanky' Smith, Leicester's first ever private detective (who was famous for wearing a top hat apparently). One bike and generator sat at the base of a tree and five brightly coloured top hats hung from the branches above. As people stumbled across the lone bike, hopped on and started pedaling they would trigger a motor in one of the hats which would spin around whilst the others lit up. The faster they pedaled, the faster the top hat would spin.
The funny thing at this festival was that not many people were brave enough to get on the bike and many that did, failed to look up and see the what they were powering! Some lessons learned we think, although we were loathed to put a sign up that told people specifically what to do - we thought it would spoil the surprise!! But it was funny watching people figure out what was happening.
We also powered the PA system for a bandstand stage in Summer Sundae's new Victoriana themed area, Curiosity Corner which hosted an incredible range of poetry and story telling from the guys at Phrased & Confused, comedy and acoustic music. We felt very lucky to get all these brilliant acts coming over to perform right next to our pedal-powered mobile phone charging stand.
The phone charging went down a treat at this festival and we suspect it was largely due to the slightly younger crowd who could not live without their phones (actually we know the feeling). We also debuted a small but very lovely Glove Love display as we tried to sell recycled gloves from Do The Green Thing for the first time. We think this made a great addition and would love to look into stocking more recycled produce on our stands in the future.
