Slushfest (Lushfest 2012) Fresh Handmade Festival
How to Make a Fresh Handmade Festival
Start with a reasonable amount of dosh say 2 million pounds. Find the best location, the best artists, food and campaigns imaginable. Then, as a gesture of goodwill, fill it with your gorgeous products (that are either half price or free), invite employees, their friends and family from 50 nations THEN add 1 month of rain in just a few days!
What do you get? Lushfest 2012 or as it was affectionately known Slushfest!
Put you Money Where Your Mouth Is – The Prize, Emotional Brilliance!
You have to admire Lush for showcasing what they do in such exuberant fashion and rewarding their staff with what amounts to a working holiday and free festival vibe. This year they have launched the Lush Prize £250,000 for an individual or organisation working towards the end of animal testing in cosmetics. A personal video from Managing Director & Co-Founder Mark Constantine on YouTube explains how a law passed years ago has been largely ignored by big industry and highlights the obscenity and hypocrisy of businesses who are pocketing profits whilst causing pain and suffering to animals.
As if to prove their point Lush announced Emotional Brilliance a range of make-up designed to compliment your mood. In layman terms Lush are using colour therapy in their stores from 21st July so be sure to go and get yourself a reading. I have always been bemused by the pseudo science used to sell shampoo and make-up to the masses. For instance ladies in white coats at department stores, computer graphics explaining how your skin/ hair benefits. It seems Lush have set-out their stall to dispel these archaic practices and marketing myths. Is the point of psuedo-science marketing to make you feel stupid? And what’s the reason behind beauty magazines don’t they just make you feel ugly ? ! ! As with all Lush stuff the packaging and products have been designed to be as environmentally friendly as possible and really work – I might even start wearing make-up as part of my act!
As if that wasn’t enough there was an amazingly scented Mercedes bus perfume shop, stone circle and complimentary comic from Gorilla Perfume to launch their new range of smellies. Inspiration for this new range of perfume comes from far and wide but not least of all places the London riots ‘burn incense not cars’. There was much too much to mention here but if you are inspired to find out more search YouTube for Lushfest 2012 you will not be disapointed.
View from Earwig the Barrow
As a local, environmental, performer and recycler I could not be happier with Slushfest. This year I met-up with a few acquaintances from last year and made some new friends in my woodland residence. Saturday torrential rain meant that we could not get on site with Earwig the disco barrow but we still managed to use the park-and-ride to get in and look around. The live performance of Soundbath with spa therapy treatments was a personal highlight for me on Saturday.
Sunday I set-up in the woods and started playing music to passers by. Plenty of people stopped to take photos and boogie on down, many remembered or had heard about me from last year. The best track for me was Chaka Khan – I feel for you which seemed to fit in with the Emotional Brilliance theme quite well. I even caught the attention of some professional DJ’s who happened to be playing that night and took over my equipment for quite some time. BIG shout out to Briony, DJ Peachy, Matt, Steve, Keiron, Spooks and Tea n Toast crew.
Corporate bookings like Lushfest help subsidise Tip of the Pops community work by paying for running costs and educational activities. Tip of the Pops solar powered wheelbarrow disco is a not-for-profit alliance of community arts and sustainability. DJ Dynamo, recycler of old vintage records and equipment is an award winning social entrepreneur based in Dorset whose tag line is ‘reduce, reuse, recycle, boogie!’. Later this year Tip of the Pops will be performing a World Festival Exclusive at the Shambala festival, August 24th-27th. Tickets are still available for Shambala the best colourful, creative, family friendly, community led and 2011 Greener Festival winner, so Keep it Wheel… and see you there.
Ecotainment! Solar Powered Discos 