Backup Tech, the UK's Registered Technical Entertainment Charity that provides financial and well-being support to technical industry professionals, crew, and production personnel, hosted its highly anticipated Kart-Fest on July 6th, 2023, at Sandown Park. This year, Kart-Fest took on a traditional British village fête theme, offering a range of activities beyond the usual karting to support wellness and mental health. It was a day to get your best tweed, flowery dress and, if you were so inclined, Morris Dancing regalia, ready.
Event Cycle was delighted to be involved and took it as the perfect opportunity to showcase how we help recycle and reuse event materials to stop them from going to landfill.
"With a strong focus on keeping materials in use, we were determined to deliver a vibrant, fully repurposed, fête stall at Kart-Fest,"
said Carina Jandt, Founder, Event Cycle,
"Our collaboration with social enterprises exemplified our dedication to eco-friendly practices while supporting local communities."
Backup Trustee and Kart-Fest organiser, Lee Dennison said of the event,
“Building on eight years of successful Kart-Fests we’re adding an extra layer of theming to this year’s event and incorporating the traditional British village fête. This now provides the day out we have been looking to create for the live events industry with the karting becoming part of the day rather than the focus.”
Very useful, wood
After hearing the news that the Kartfest theme was ‘The Village Fête’, Event Cycle were keen to create a fun and engaging stall to encourage attendees to take part and learn more about what we do.
First of all, we reached out to our network of social enterprises, asking if they could create a cornhole game, based on our design.
After receiving the brief, Useful Wood, based out of Woking were able to bring our design to life as well as creating a freestanding a-frame and scoreboard!
The team at Useful Wood provide a waste wood collection service for local building sites and recycle the wood. They also sell wood for DIY and make beautiful and useful wood products in their workshops. Any wood that can’t be used is chipped for biofuel.
If that wasn't enough, they give people who cannot access the job market at present, the opportunity to gain experience of a real work environment, gaining confidence and useful skills for the future.
When the Event Cycle team collected the finished product, there were lots of volunteers busy de-nailing and measuring offcuts, all to be stored and used for future products.
Different strokes for different folks
Next on the to-do list was painting the cornhole game and scoreboard. The Event Cycle team managed to source some paint from the local recycling centre as well as using spare paint from a household project to work on the design, including some blackboard paint for our scoreboard. It was super fun and great to step away from the laptop and use up some leftover paint, plus we managed to miss the rain!
Destined for the Fête
Whilst Chantal and Simon were busy painting, Syebvonne Nguyen at Little A.R.K was using her sewing and recycling skills to repurpose some donated fabric from a recent activation that Event Cycle were called on to help with.
Little A.R.K stands for Little Acts of Random Kindness is a community interest group, supporting those in the local community.
Syebvonne used material from the promotional set piece to create the cornhole bean bags and filled them with silicone offcuts from some old event banners. They worked perfectly on the day and looked fantastic too.
The gazebo was borrowed from a friend and the bunting for the fête stall was created using repurposed materials from the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, where Event Cycle handled a lot of the asset dissolution.
She also made some super cute pumpkin stress balls using the same materials that we were able to hand out as prizes for any cornhole champions!
Roll up, roll up!
The Event Cycle team at Kartfest were Andy, Simon and Carina - all dressed up in their summer fête attire, ready to welcome happy punters to their stall. We had a lot of interesting companies to chat with and catch up with, as well as getting involved in what the stall had to offer.
There were some great creative games to play, and we really enjoyed getting people involved in our cornhole attraction and telling them about what it is we do.
What we ate at the fête
A village fête wouldn't be complete without a bake off and the Kartfest stalls did not disappoint. Each stall made a great effort in decorating and presenting their bakes, but it was Event Cycle who took first prize, with Carinas Strawberry and Lemonade Sponge cake, presented on a borrowed cake stand, on top of a flight case provided by Creative Technology!
A deserving win and truly great end to the day.
But that’s not all..!
Fern Hill Primary school PSA, based in Kingston runs regular fundraising and community themed activities and has a very active Parents Student Association. They were contacted by Event Cycle during the cornhole design process to see if they would be interested in receiving the game as well as our bunting after the event had finished.
Rebecca O’Reilly, PSA Trustee at the school welcomed our donation, saying,
“This will be perfect for our summer fair”
A truly circular series of events, ensuring nothing went to waste and can be enjoyed for future years.
3 cheers for the village fête!
For more information on how to reduce event waste and carbon emissions whilst benefiting the local community get in touch