For the fourth year in a row, Cape Town-based urban greening and reforestation organisation Greenpop is returning to one of the country’s favourite festivals, Rocking the Daisies to host the solar-powered Green Village.
This year the space of environmental activation, dialogue and celebration will feature an array of exhibitors and activations. With a stellar lineup of African performers on the Hemp Stage, a Fry’s Foods plant-based burger bar, TEDx talks and a variety of new activities and installations aimed at raising environmental awareness amongst attendees, the Village will offer exciting new ways of participating in, and spreading the festival’s green message.
Activators
A selection of activators is set to include leaders in the green movement, ranging from global environmental organisations like Greenpeace, to university societies like UCT’s Vegilicious society, Regenize Recycling showcasing their app which rewards users with points for recycling, to Oranjezicht City Farm, and Fossil Free SA. The concept behind these activations is to advocate the festival’s environmental theme, and offer attendees a new chance to actively help promote it.
Hemp Stage
The renowned stage returns once again, with an exciting lineup of some of the continent’s finest artists and performers. Set to provide the Village’s soundtrack, the Hemp Stage will feature bands like one of Zimbabwe’s Flying Bantu; FlintStonez ESC from the Eastern Cape, and Capetonian up-and-comers The Steezies. Following the Village’s market theme for the year, the Hemp Stage’s lineup has been curated to showcase a range of new and established African artists to get the crowd grooving.
TEDxCapeTown
Independently planned and coordinated, TEDx events are run on a community-by-community basis with unique content and design, but a strong alignment with TED’s global standards. The goal of these events is to spark conversation and connection, with no commercial, religious or political agenda. This year, the Green Village will feature past TEDxCapeTown talks and speakers like Freshlyground lead singer Zolani Mahola, and Greenpop’s own “Tree-E-O” Misha Teasdale. The activation is all about taking TEDx beyond the stage, and partnering with like-minded organisations to share “#IdeasWorthSpreading”, embracing the philosophy of participative community.
Fry’s Plant-based Burger Bar and Art Installation
The Fry Family Food Co. have once again partnered with Greenpop to bring a focus on plant-based eating to Rocking the Daisies. The Fry’s team will provide meals from their burger bar, sampling their famous nuggets, and showing that plant-based eating is not only healthy and sustainable, but can also be delicious. Beef-style sloppy joes, their signature chicken-style burgers, hotdogs with smoor and more will be showcased. The installation has also commissioned Zambian artist Mwamba Chikwemba to create an artwork that is “#PoweredByPlants”, tying together the feelings of Ubuntu, sustainability
and respect.
Green Parade
A comedic spectacle of Rocking The Daisies, the Green Parade gets campers up and actively involved in greening the festival. This time around, the parade will start at the Green Village and make it’s way through the camp grounds, sowing the seeds of green fun and wisdom, with musicians, performers and Green Village activators leading the charge.
Greening the Festival
As an environmental partner of Rocking the Daisies, Greenpop is proud to announce that the festival is taking even more steps to ensure the ecological effects of the festival are minimised as much as possible. For the first time ever, the festival will utilise a full greywater solution, which will collect from the 200,000 liters of water used for washing and showering over the weekend, then filter and recirculate the water for irrigation on the venue’s farm. Similarly, waste management will be run as an in-house operation, with the setup of waste collection points. Vendors at the festival are also required to use ecologically-friendly packaging, to minimise the amount of harmful waste produced.
The widely acclaimed “Walking the Daisies” initiative, a two-day hike that starts in Cape Town and ends at the festival in Darling, will once again aim to create positive environmental action, facilitate conscious dialog and raise awareness about the social and environmental challenges we face today.
The Green Village will also feature a host of other activities and installations such as a tinker and sewing station where attendees can use recycled goods and their own creativity to spruce up their festival attire, a conscious camp showcasing environmentally-friendly camping practices, a real-world interactive “infographic” in partnership with PETCO illustrating the benefits of recycling, and an interactive entrance tunnel on which they will be able to write messages and add to the green movement.