After Notts Council told Nottingham Vegan Campaigns we could no longer use the Council House for our annual food festival, we took it to the streets instead. The aim was to set up 10 stalls - five food-related and five campaign stalls - in locations across Nottingham. The event went really well, so a huge thanks to everyone involved!

Nottingham Vegan Campaigns - which includes members of Nottingham Animal Rights and Veggies - have held monthly free food give-aways in Nottingham throughout the past year, so after being told by the council we could no longer use the council building to hold the East Midlands Vegan Festival (as in previous years) we decided to take it to the streets instead.

The aim was to set up five campaigning stalls and five animal rights stalls across the city centre, which we succeeded in doing... miraculously with no interference whatsoever from traffic wardens as we were dropping off stalls, people, literature and food in busy city centre locations - or from community wardens as we were distributing the food itself!

The stalls themselves were going for several hours, attracting a huge amount of attention from busy shoppers, distributing hundreds of recipe books and having plenty of productive conversations with people interested in discussing animal rights, veganism and how to bake a decent vegan chocolate cake!

Campaign and food stalls were held at: the Victoria Centre Clock tower (with donations from the Natural Food Company and the staff at Lembas), Hockley (with food from Annie's Burger Shack at the Old Angel - with a bookstall and AR info point also inside the pub itself), outside McDonald's (where we cooked hot Veggies Burgers), near the fountains in market square (with Alley Cafe food) and two huge stalls outside the Council House itself (with food from the Screaming Carrot, Plamil Chocolate, Scheese & soya milk samples - along with a load of vegan pizza, cakes and biscuits cooked by the volunteers themselves). All in all, it was a lot of time and hard work to coordinate, but seemed to be a huge success in allowing us to directly engage with the public, who might not ordinarily have attended events perceived as 'vegan' or 'animal rights related'. I think everyone involved thought it was worth the time and effort because of the opportunity it gave us for public engagement. The food certainly seemed to go down well - as reflected in the huge number of recipe books distributed!

Thanks must go to the Vegan Society for help, support and literature! Other thanks has to go to Nottingham Animal Rights, Veggies' Volunteers, the Sumac centre, Animal Aid and everyone who helped out on the day and in the run up... giving out food, printing leaflets, cooking, washing-up & providing support in other ways - THANK YOU!

For more info, see: www.veggies.org.uk/event.php?ref=1400

For a copy of the recipes we gave out, or if you'd like to get involved with next year's run of food campaigns, please email nottsfreefood@gmail.com