What is Your WI Planning for The Great Big Green Week?

The WI is supporting The Climate Coalition’s plans for The Great Big Green Week. Running from the 18 to 26 September 2021, The Great Big Green Week will be a national week of events celebrating action on climate change.

Communities across the UK will be joining together to celebrate local action on climate change and to protect our green spaces, and will be calling on politicians to raise their ambition and champion action on climate change. As a WI member wanting to raise your voice for vital climate action, The Climate Coalition would like to invite you and your WI to either organise a community event for the festival, or help to arrange and co-ordinate your own community festival. You can also take part in a range of activities from home.

The WI has been working with The Climate Coalition and its member organisations to provide plenty of resources for you to use to help you organise your community event or green week. These include resource guides focusing on the practicalities of organising your own event, promotional resources which would help you advertise your local green week or community event, and toolkits on how to engage your MP on climate change as a constituent. These can be found on The Great Big Green Week’s website.

Throughout the year, The Climate Coalition will also be organising training webinars to help you plan your community event or festival. This can be found on The Great Big Green Week’s ‘Training’ page. This week in September is a nationwide celebration of action on climate change and WIs throughout the UK will be arranging events to support it. So we hope that WIs in Cornwall will do their bit.

Suggestions on The Great Big Green Week website include:

Better Green Space for People & Nature

• Litter picking and transforming green spaces into the great community hubs they could be
• Community planting of bulbs and wildflower seeds: in containers, around street trees or in local parks
• Community tree dedication: Find your favourite tree, give it a name and a name tag to celebrate the iconic trees at the heart of our communities. Combine this with a picnic to encourage more people to join in.

More connected green spaces

• Green Trails using green wool or chalk, set up a trail between the amazing green spaces in your neighbourhood
• Speak to Your Neighbours about how you can connect your homes and gardens to create hedgehog highways, pollinator paths and frog footways

More green spaces for all

• I could be fabulous!: signpost neglected spaces that could be community hubs with luggage tags or chalk, share the images on social media
• Speak to your local authority to find out who owns the ‘unloved’ land and what the options to improve it
• Get Social: find others and set up a group to create more green in your area: planters on high streets, spruced up alleyways, and cherished green spaces

Ideas from Cornwall WIs so far include:

• a coffee morning with fast fashion
• litter picks
• seed and acorn planting
• craftivism (see photo of banner made by Truro WI members).

We hope there will be lots more and we’d like to hear about your ideas and plans.