Sunday 17th July 2022
Our last day at Vegan Camp Out today. My morning started a bit earlier, as I joined the 8.30am yoga class taking place in the Mind & Body tent. This was well-attended and a good way to start the day! No-body seemed to care how good you were at yoga, so it was a relaxing class. This festival also feels very welcoming - people say hello and chat to their ‘neighbours’ in the fitness classes, adding to the nice atmosphere. I got back to the van around 10am for breakfast, before heading to the main arena for a talk starting at 11am.
The talk focused on Plant Based Universities, pushing forward the idea of only a plant based diet being served at all university cafes and dining halls. The talk was given by students from a few different universities and gave examples of how some student unions have now voted in favour of a plant based diet being served at meetings, which is great progress.
Following on from that we attended the 12pm talk, again taking place in the Activism tent, given by Rachel Bowcutt from The Vegan Society, explaining all about the Society and the work that it does.
As listening to talks one after another can sometimes be a lot of information to take in, we had a break before going to a talk at 2pm focusing on veganism in education, with a panel of three individuals from ProVeg, The Vegan Society and Vegan Inclusive Education. Once this had finished, we went straight to the Main Stage to listen to the founder of Viva!, Juilet Gellatley, give a talk on her experiences of seeing wildlife in Uganda and the work her charity does.
After another break to get some dinner, we listened to Gaz Oakley talk about his work as a vegan chef and what he would like to focus on in the future, as well as answering some of the audience’s questions. I haven’t heard of him before but his recipes sound great.
From 5pm, there was Question Time with Animal Rebellion, hearing from a panel of activists about the type of actions they have participated in, and their motivations. It was definitely one of the best talks to listen to, extremely interesting.
I stayed to listen to another talk by Viva!, this time given by Tony Wardle. I missed the start of his talk, but he mainly talked about the monarchy, government and different investigations that Viva! have undertaken into factory farming.
The last talk of the weekend in the Activism Tent was about Camp Beagle, and vivisection. The beginning of the talk and the footage shown made me cry, but I was glad to have listened.
Finally, Earthling Ed was the headliner in the Main Stage! He was SO good - a very good public speaker, talking about how he became vegan and his conversations with strangers on their thoughts of veganism. It was really interesting and a great way to end the weekend. He did an Afterparty DJ set, but as Mum was beginning to feel quite tired, we didn’t stay for it and went back to the van. She did a Covid test just to check, but it was negative.
Having never been to the Vegan Camp Out before and being unsure whether or not we should book tickets, I am so glad we did! It was a great weekend. There were so many good talks, and so many other things to do as well, like swimming in the lake, fitness and yoga classes, and listening to music, that it was impossible to do it all. It was such a nice atmosphere with everyone enjoying the festival, despite the heat on Sunday. There was also hardly any litter anywhere around site - there were litter pickers but people weren’t dropping anything really, so it was noticeably clean even in the main tents, especially compared to Glastonbury where the litter was a problem. All in all, it was definitely worth coming to. Looking forward to returning next year to Vegan Camp Out!!
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