West Midlands Vegan Festival 2014 - Wolverhampton, October 25th, 2014

By Shari Black Velvet

2014 is the 70 year anniversary of veganism, and also the 7th year that the West Midlands Vegan Festival has been held. Organised by Kevin White and Midlands Vegan Campaigns, the festival was held at Wolverhampton Civic and Wulfrun Hall on Saturday 25th October and sponsored by Moo Free, dairy free confectionery, along with Yaoh, VegFest and Clearspring. The event costs only £1 entrance which goes towards the cost of hiring the venue with the first 200 people through the door getting a free goodie bag full of vegan items. As per always we were obviously too late... working all week and not getting to bed till 3am means we'll probably never be a contender for the early bird vegan goodie bag - although we did make it earlier than last year! And once we were in there, we were confronted by many, many other goodies eagerly awaiting and tempting purchase. The West Midlands Vegan Festival features tons of stalls, mostly in the main Civic Hall - which literally take ages to get round as there's so much to look at and sample. There's food, cosmetics, clothing, cookery books, campaign merchandise... there were raffles to win other goodies... Whether you want vegan marshmallows, drinks coasters, mugs, lip balms, bags, badges, shoes or T-shirts, you're guaranteed to leave with something that's taken your fancy. This year Loretta Hope performed an aerial display from the main Civic Hall stage, where she draped herself in material, twisting, turning, unravelling from a great height. A free program is available on your way in - although we could do with this in advance as we always seem to charge in and round the stalls and don't actually get to look at the program until it's too late! (Maybe that's just me). I always spend too much time perusing the stalls and then realise when it's really late that I've missed half of the talks and performers in the other rooms. D'oh. We did catch a vegan chocolate mousse demonstration by Birgit Kehrer of Change Kitchen up in the Civic Bar, and then discovered Kye Oram, a singer/acoustic guitarist performing on the Wulfrun Hall stage, before Tim Barford of Yaoh played. The Wulfrun Hall included a few more stalls but also a bar, food stalls and seating area, so you could watch the singers/performers while taking a break and eating/drinking. Towards the end of the day, organiser Kevin White announced that the festival will return in 2015, which is great to know. If you missed this one, make sure you get to 2015's.

For more info, visit www.midlandsveganfestival.org.uk