After helping at a successful Veggie Food Fair in Coventry in April `05, campaigners in Redditch decided to organise a similar event in our own town. A convenient date was set(8th October), and the most suitable, accessible, central venue in town(St Stephens Church) was booked.

Redditch Vegetarians and Vegans was formed in order to publicise the event and also to find likeminded people across the town to get involved with veggie/vegan campaigning, socialising etc. This website was created, which later proved to be invaluable in providing detailed information about what potential event attendees could expect to find. Approx 7-8 weeks before the date of the fair, leaflets were printed and we began to distribute them throughout the town. A4 posters were also printed and displayed on noticeboards, shop windows, libraries etc. In order to raise funds towards the event, and also to publicise it some more, various leaflet stalls were held in Redditch Town Centre, at Hillfields Sanctuary Open Day and elsewhere.

We got in touch with various national campaigning groups, asking them to mail out to all their members throughout the Redditch area. News of the fair and the formation of RVV was mailed out by Viva!, Peta and The Vegan Society

Various sympathetic people/groups in Redditch and beyond, displayed a text or banner link(see below) to our website, on their own websites.

Several people within RVV began to prepare large amounts of home made food, weeks in advance. Letters were written to well known veggie food producers, inviting them to send food donations. Redwoods Wholefoods, Granovita, Alpro and Beanies Health Foods all sent a very generous assortment of their products, but the best came from Fayrefield, who sent us 36 tubs of Swedish Glace, their delicious dairy-free ice cream!!

Although we were able to find many of our volunteers within Redditch, we didn`t have enough local supporters to enable us to properly run the event. In the weeks leading upto the fair, approx 10 people from Birmingham, Solihull and Coventry were found to help us out on the day. Some of these also helped us prepare food before the event.

An excellent letter from one of members, was printed in the local press 2 weeks before the fair. The letter, written in response to an article about school dinners, was the first time the forthcoming fair was brought to the attention of 1,000`s of people across the town. Read the letter here

2 weeks before the big day, we sent off a press release to all local media and 2 Redditch papers arranged a photo shoot with us(see pic). Both of these, and 3 more local papers, printed excellent articles advertising the event. Click the following links to read articles in the respective papers - Redditch Standard, Birmingham Evening Mail and Redditch Advertiser The recently launched Radio Redditch broadcast news of the forthcoming fair over several days.

Just 10 days before the fair, the government announced their intention to ban junk food in schools, so we seized the opportunity to write to every school in Redditch inviting along pupils, their parents, teachers and kitchen staff, to sample healthy veggie/vegan food.

On the Saturday before the fair, we displayed our posters advertising the event in the town centre, whilst we distributed several hundred leaflets to passers by. This was repeated again on the Thursday and Friday before the fair.

2 Midlands radio stations(The Bear and Saga) contacted us a couple of days before the event, wanting a member of RVV to give pre-recorded interviews about the fair. These were both broadcast on their news bulletins throughout the morning of the fair.

At the fair, 2 Redditch newspapers(Standard and Advertiser) sent photographers along to take some snaps. And a couple of days after the event, we press released news of how the fair went, which helped local papers to write an accurate report.

Thanks to all this great publicity, the fair was a huge success(read full report) and many people have since got in touch with us about joining the group etc.

Why don`t you organise a free veggie food fair in your town?? Not only will you persuade people to adopt a cruelty-free diet, you`ll also find new people to get involved in campaigning! Start to plan it as early as we did, get as many people involved as possible and be sure to contact all your local media well in advance. Give it a shot, you can`t go wrong!! See the Realfood guide to organising a free food fair.