This is the fifth year of our beloved Pumpkin Trail in Hebden Bridge.
Hebden Royd Town Council, commissioned this event and asked for a climate emergency theme like last year, but with a different angel.
this trail took people on an optimistic journey to the year 2084, showing all the positive things that we’re done to help create a stable climate future and providing detailed information about each action.
The trail started in the Town Hall , introducing the viewer to two pumpkin characters: a young child pumpkin and parent pumpkin. They are set in the current year of 2022 with a video screen behind showing the dismal effect of what climate change looks like for our future selves, including background audio of worldwide figures discussing these effects.
A time tunnel portal then takes the viewer to the year 2084, the pumpkin child and adult have aged and there is positive visual imagery shown of how the earth in a stable climate position and how this positively affects our whole planet (homes for all, plentiful food, peace and security).
The trail’s subsequent scenes showed all the positive actions that were/could be taken to create this stable climate future, with information boards next to them explaining this in more detail.
Here are some of the scenes that the trail had:
- Voting for Climate & Activism: Getting the correct people in government who make it policy to tackle climate change.
- Renewable Energy the Viking Way: Following Denmark and having industries stop investing in fossil fuels and start investing in renewable energy and green solutions.
- Circular Economy & A Lot Less Energy: Food manufacturers to use a selection of packaging that can be returned, washed, re filled and relabelled to be put back on the shelf. Products made to last longer (such as electrical items) and be able to be repaired and recycled, cobblers, tailors, gadget repair people to be commonplace again and single use disposable items to be a thing of the past.
- Saving The Planet One Bite At a time: A Planetary Diet, which can include meat and dairy but at a 35% reduced amount.
We had two environmental experts positioned on the trail, who were able to answer people’s questions and talk in more detail about scenes.
We also had a show stopping live pumpkin carve over the two days of the event, it was carved by Peter and assisted by Dave. They carved a cute Beaver, which was to discuss how natural solutions and technology can be used more to combat issues with climate. The reintroduction of Beavers can be a natural solution to flooding in certain suitable areas.
At the end of trail we had climate pledge opportunities for both children and adults. Children could create a paper tree with their pledge on and stick it on to a large world. Adults and children were also given the opportunity to take part in a pledge portal set in-front of the iconic Hebden Bridge. They made their recorded climate pledges to the people of 2084. The footage is to be stored with Pennine Horizons and shown again at the same place, same date, and same time in the year 2084.
We had free pumpkin carving workshops for people to bring their own pumpkins to carve at. Hebden Royd Town Council also put on a competition at the workshops where people could share their pumpkin on social media and win a set of signed books by local author Sue Ellis.
The weekend provided one beautiful sunny day and one very stormy, heavy rain day but loads of people from near and far came to take part in the trail and the verbal responses that we got from people and Hebden Royd Town Council showed how successful the event was.
After a long two days some of the team went for a well deserved beer at Hebden’s local Vocation, the vegan duck fried from Slap & Pickle in the this pub are actually incredible even if you are not vegan, a must try!
