An Autumn Festival has been held annually at St James’ in October since 2010.  The LiveSimply Group has been represented on the organising team of the festival by two of its members, Julian Arnold and Mary Ingledew since 2012.  The festival provides valuable funds for the parish in a simple and enjoyable spirit of community.

Julian, the chairman of our LiveSimply Group has served as chairman of the festival and ensured that the core principles of LiveSimply have been recognised.  As it declares on the festival programme the organisers were supporting the aims of LiveSimply by home-crafting, re-using and re-cycling.

The Craft Club set the tone of the event by making a huge banner all from re-cycled materials (see header above).

A number of stalls bear this out with the Catholic Women’s League and our Monday Craft Club selling a range of home made crafts from wool, fabric and even can ring pulls.  Many of the items sold were recycled including the shirts for the teddy bears and scarves made from oddments of wool or re-cycled wool.  Home made jewellery, second hand books, puzzles and CDs, children’s craft activities, home made cakes and hot dishes made up the inside stalls.

Outside there were jams and preserves, garden plants and produce for sale.  Good old-fashioned children’s games such as smack the rat, find the treasure, magnetic fishing, etc. provide a welcome alternative to the more high-tech variety (although popular TV characters for young children were on offer indoors as well).

Mary had a key role in ensuring that catering accessories were eco-friendly, sourcing ‘crockery’ and ‘cutlery’ from a company called Biopac.  Biopac is a leading UK developer and supplier of eco-friendly packaging and catering disposables.  After years of research they market a range of innovative and environmentally friendly products that are both practical and sustainable.

Some of the ‘crockery’ used was made of sugar-cane; some was cardboard and the “plastic” tumblers were biodegradable.

Mary set up a recycling station with clearly labelled bins in the parish garden where most food and drink was consumed.  The vast majority of items were re-cycled appropriately including plastic bottles; aluminium, tin and paper.  The very small quantity of leftover food was disposed of through Bromley Council’s domestic food waste collection system.

There was even a quiz, cleverly entitled “QuizSimply” to reflect the parish’s involvement with LiveSimply.

Some of the photos on the website illustrate examples of how LiveSimply has been brought to the attention of festival-goers.  The order acknowledgement from Biopac indicates that the cost of eco-friendly consumables are not prohibitive.