Following the success of our involvement in last year’s Manchester Coffee Festival we were delighted when Cup North invited us to be a community partner of the 2023 Birmingham Coffee Festival alongside local environmental organisation ecobirmingham.
Hosted by Cup North for the first time, Birmingham Coffee Festival is a vibrant annual event that brings the Midlands coffee community together to share information, try new coffees, meet familiar faces, and listen to talks from speakers across the industry. This year’s festival took place in the city’s Custard Factory on the 8th and 9th July and everyone from coffee subscription companies, to milk brands and coffee machine suppliers exhibited and showcased the breadth of dynamic business from this part of the UK! It was a real pleasure to chat with such a wide range of people involved in the industry and have some great conversations about how Farmers’ Voice Radio can contribute to the sustainability of the sector.
Hannah Clark and Helen Nichols, the newest member of our team, hosted the Farmers’ Voice Radio stall, where we ran a raffle with prizes generously donated by the shows’ exhibitors, including Harry’s Hot Chocolate, 200Degrees and Ritual Coffee Roasters. The winners were Scott and Luce from Toucan Tango who run a printmaker and coffee shop in Liverpool - congratulations both, we really hope you enjoy the goodies!
The event this year was paper-free, with Keep Cup on hand to loan reusable cups to those who had forgotten their own – it was great to see the festival levelling up environmentally in this way! As well as the live talks during the weekend, visitors were also treated to a coffee showdown competition at the Extracted Development brew bar where roasters and baristas from different businesses were paired together to produce a plant based drink, espressos and filter coffees. Congratulations to the competition winners, Laura Metcalfe from Saint Coffee Roasters and Coulainn Boland-Shanahan from Conscious Coffee.
Hannah Clark took to the stage on Saturday afternoon to explain how Farmers’ Voice Radio works and to share some project updates with a live festival audience. We had some fantastic conversations with potential partners and supporters, and are looking forward to seeing them again over the coming months. Huge thanks to Cup North for the invitation to partner and for donating 6% of ticket sales to be shared between Farmers’ Voice Radio and ecobirmingham. This generous contribution will help us in our current mission to extend the FVR Academy to smallholder coffee farmer organisations in Latin America in 2024.
Cup North’s events are always a highlight of our year – only four months until Manchester Coffee Festival and we cannot wait!
Yorumlar