Outside in the yard at Firecracker Works there were boxes of scaffolding elbows, scaffolding bars and foam covers, long metal white bars, chicken mesh and guttering pieces, plain and painted. Inside and upstairs, there were rolls and rolls of all kinds of fabric, from black grey and white molton to iridescent mesh and canvas.
With a busy year ahead post-pandemic, the team at Firecracker, who design and build brand experiences, needed to create some room in their warehouse but didn't want to see these good quality materials go to waste.
They got in touch with Event Cycle and challenged us to get rid of the unusual items which they had held onto in the hope of finding alternative uses for them.
A load of rubbish, one might argue... but not to us and certainly not to Towersey Festival.
Towersey originally started out as a fundraising one-day event to rescue the decaying Towersey Village Memorial Hall - a building that commemorated the 14 men who had lost their lives in the First World War. It was so popular, it returned the following year as a three-day event.
As it continued to grow organically it attracted more families, new generations of fun-loving festival-goers, and moved onto land purchased by the festival for the village. Its goal was to provide a culturally significant event for the local community. From its humble beginnings, the festival has grown into an annual event of folk, world music and traditional dance attracting 10,000 each year.
And right from the start, the family-run festival has had sustainability at its heart.
“Towersey Festival has led the way on sustainability, with a track record of recycling going back to the 1960’s when the festival began. In recent years we have cut our fuel use by over 30% and now recycle or repurpose over 85% of everything that leaves the site.” said Towersey.
In order to stick to their sustainable goals, the Towersey team got in touch with Event Cycle to source some items which would help them create their festival environments.
“We are delighted to be one of the first festivals to be working with Event Cycle. This new partnership is a simply brilliant way of continuing that passion and making use of what otherwise would be terribly wasteful single-use items. We can’t wait to create some exciting new installations, games and decorations with the items Event Cycle have managed to save from landfill for us, and we’re looking forward to being able to contribute some items from our festival store too so that other organisations can benefit from this great initiative” Team Towersey
And we’re excited about it too. We’re here to help more than just the corporate world keep materials in use and out of landfill. Get in touch to find out how.
This is part 2 of the Firecracker story, find out how they helped a community centre in need in Part 3