“Everybody wants to live in a world with clean rivers and oceans and an abundance of wildlife. We’ve got to make the connection.” — Dan Graham.
On the 24th May, Hulme Park will be home to the Vegan Organic Network’s 2025 Eco Festival, offering much more than a regular festival experience with a lineup of musical and circus entertainment, but also opportunities to learn new skills. Aside from vegan food stalls, there will be a variety of interactive workshops to get involved with. The sprouting workshop, for example, will give visitors the skills to produce nutritious food that can be grown in a jar over just a few days.
I met with Dan Graham, events organiser for the Vegan Organic Network, to discuss the festival and the legacy it will leave — a legacy involving vegan and environmentally friendly practices, foraging, gardening, tai chi, and discussions on natural healing. Graham was eager to talk about his lifelong passion for animal rights and rewilding, as well as working with communities to provide them with the tools to enact sustainable change. When speaking to him, his dedication struck me as rare and inspiring.
We talked about the artist Cherry Chung’s weaving projects, enchanting sculptures of woodland animals, which will be displayed around the park. You will be able to spot the owl, squirrel, and badger, amongst others, made from a willow tree. Chung will be offering the most recent iteration of her basket-making workshop for a chance to learn the ancient art.
Following on from this, Graham smiled, describing a pedal-powered rickshaw for rides around the park, as well as the tightrope, diabolo and plate spinning which he has organised in contact with a professional circus group. Every element of the day has been planned with interaction in mind to help Graham’s sustainability goals resonate with the local community, creating dialogue and delivering a message of change in an approachable way. All of which, impressively, has been organised through his own personal and professional network.
As we talked, his vision of a vibrant urban festival became clearer. However, he never lost sight of the bigger picture: “Everything we do here affects what’s going on” in the countryside, he said. Which is why the main stage will be fully off-grid, meaning that it runs on the festival’s own solar and wind power generators.
The music is definitely something to look forward to. During our conversation, Graham was still receiving offers from local musicians wanting to play at the festival, so it looks like the line-up will be full of local artists – reason enough to come down. Graham was most excited about the Niamos house band, a group that regularly plays in Hulme. On the occasions I’ve seen them perform their easy-going improvisational mix of reggae and soul, I’ve left carrying with me their carefree spirit. There is consistent dialogue within the band on stage, which makes it feel like they forget about the performance altogether in a refreshing appreciation for the music and the community that it creates. It often feels as though the boundaries between band and audience become hazy, obscured by un-choreographed dance and magnetically repetitive melodies. With a distinctively uplifting flare, they will be the perfect addition to a festival focused on collective action.
Off the back of the Vegan Animal Rights Conference in central Manchester, Graham explained how the Vegan Organic Network reflected on the way in which activists have appealed to communities in the past; “The shock thing of showing people graphic images isn’t always the best approach. We’re trying to show that being vegan is positive”. And it’s working. On their website, the Vegan Organic Network have recently launched a map of all the veganic – a coinage, meaning vegan and organic – farming initiatives across the globe, currently totalling 896, a number which is set to rise. “The aim is to get seven billion people on the map”.
I was keen to understand Graham’s personal views on the movement. His interest in farming and livestock practices comes from a sense of respect for animal rights, the natural environment, as well as for the human consequences of the division of land. He suggested “the reason all our wildlife has been decimated is because of farming”, noting that about 60 percent of land in the UK is used for animal agriculture, whereas less than five percent is built on. This statistic underscores the imperative he feels to challenge the ethics of heavily subsidised industrial farming practices, in regards to the animals and the surrounding landscape. Moreover, Graham drew a link between this land use and rising housing costs, suggesting that “animal agriculture is there to control the land and to keep people off the land” in an illusion of scarcity. This is not just a project, but a living politics and a lifelong motivator which Graham embodies in belief and practice.
Graham described a cultural disconnect from the natural environment in urban areas, which I would guess he is not alone in sensing. He was worried that living separately from the wildlife that is our sustenance is making it easier for people to “turn a blind eye” to these problems, but also to future change. As a solution to some of these issues, he spoke about rewilding, especially within the context of “off-grid living”, which he reckons could be “so easily” achieved with modern technology, although the impetus just isn’t there. With the festival, the hope is that the borders separating humans and wildlife can be challenged, with potentially radical results.
On a larger scale, he reflected, “Climate change isn’t a very helpful term because it talks about the climate as something that stands on its own. The reason things happen with the climate is because we’re destroying the environment and animal agriculture is the biggest driver of river pollution, ocean dead zones, deforestation and loss of wildlife”. Which is why he has been vegan for the last 35 years of his life, making the leap from vegetarianism after “having a chat with a friend”. For me, this helped to explain his faith in grassroots action that pervaded our conversation. Every fact he recited was inflected not with the usual sense of despair but with an enthusiasm which speaks to a genuine investment in the project as well as a confidence that the statistics speak for themselves. Despite an abundant experience of activism in a widely desensitised world, and the anecdotes to prove it, he has high hopes for the impact of initiatives such as the Hulme festival, which help people to reconsider what modern living can be. “We could re-envisage the whole landscape”.
Finally, I asked for his message to students. Without hesitation, he replied, “Wake up”, palms upturned as if pleading an obvious case, “Everybody is implicated. Everybody wants to live in a world with clean rivers and oceans and an abundance of wildlife. We’ve got to make the connection”. If this message resonates, there are plenty of opportunities to help with the running of the festival. Just message [email protected].
Come to Hulme park on 24 May for an experience of sustainable living and community in action, to be entertained, to learn, and for the free goodie bag.
