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Although the amazing sunshine yesterday made our local pub's beer garden seem more than attractive, we couldn't miss the first-ever LONDON AWARE green show in London's Barbican. While the exhibition hall was by no means full, there was a good turnout -- hundreds of people had put the sunshine on hold for a few hours and they seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves.
The small exhibition hall made for a great, intimate event space with around 100 exhibitors, an eating area and two debate areas. The benefit of keeping it small was that we could take our time checking out the exhibiting companies properly -- instead of running around like lunatics trying to see everything -- and have more in-depth chats with the vendors.
There were hands-on activities such as sewing reusable 'morsbags', guessing the amount of eggs in a vase to win an eglu and planting seeds in little newspaper pots. It created a friendly atmosphere for both children and grown-ups, and made it feel more like a sophisticated community event than a green company exhibition show.
The idea was to offer a starting point for people who would like to live more sustainably, but feel confused and don't know how to go about it. When we arrived and saw a good number of familiar green faces, we worried that this was yet another green event for greenies. A sit-in on one of the many talks, however, revealed that the majority of visitors were new to the green world and were genuinely interested in getting information and inspiration for living more sustainably.
It was also great to see that many exhibitors had decided to abandon the typical trestles-and-faded-banners practice and instead had made a real, creative effort to make their stands attractive.
Our favourite was sustainable media and design company, 'neo creative', who had made sustainable living look incredibly cool by making its stand into a sustainably designed living room (see photo).
We look forward to the next UK AWARE event, but hope it's going to be outside -- or on a rainy day.
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