The UK’s largest car sharing site Liftshare.com launched a brand-new Fringe award to help foster a community of sustainability and green thinking among performers and audiences at this year’s festival.
As one of the Fringe’s official green travel suppliers, Liftshare learned that festival organisers placed issues such as CO2, air quality and congestion in Edinburgh as top priorities that needed tackling.
With this in mine Liftshare launched its inaugural Festival Fringe Award and quickly saw an influx of entries from eco-conscious performers from all walks of life.
The criteria for submissions was simple, and invited acts to send the site a video of themselves talking about their green views, steps they were taking to lower their impact on Edinburgh, and of course, to tell a joke or two in the process.
Four weeks and several entries later, Liftshare’s panel of top judges has chosen comedian Jon Seagrave (AKA: Jonny Fluffypunk – pictured above) as their 2015 winner. The panel consisted of critically-acclaimed comedian Jonny Awsum, Creative Edinburgh’s Janine Matheson, Joe Tree of Scottish Enterprise, Richard Skinner of Responsible Travel and Social Tailor’s Colin Gilchrist.
You can watch all entries here – but the panel felt Jonny’s stood out above the pack.
You can watch Jonny’s entry here – in which he discusses the virtues of thinking green, and delivers a great poem about transport options. His show ‘Man Up Jonny Fluffpunk’ will continue beyond the Fringe and will be performed across the UK throughout the rest of the year.
Upon learning of his win, Jonny said:
”I’m chuffed to have won this award; a timely reminder in Fringe season that there’s a beautiful country lying beneath the piles of discarded flyers. We need to keep it beautiful. I’ve always been an ecologically-minded performer; my props and sets are all recycled, and a good proportion of the jokes are, too.
“Each year I and thousands of other financially-challenged performers make our way to Edinburgh by whatever means we can – bargain coach, train tickets bought a decade in advance, hitch-hiking with a suitcase full of props… all sociable and all environmentally-friendly.
“Liftshare is a perfect, eco-minded addition; you’ll make new friends, you’ll do a little bit to reduce the carbon footprint and with a bit of luck, whoever you share a lift with might even come to your show.”
Liftshare hopes to return to Edinburgh with this award again in 2016, following a successful first run. It aims to be bigger, better and more engaging based on this years superb feedback.
Which entry do you like best from the list above?
Submitted by Dave Cook
