Witness the Wild

Half of every breath we take comes from the ocean. And yet that big blue watery thing out there that covers more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface and the things that call it home are often invisible to those of us living in our concrete jungles. Even though half of the world’s population lives within 100 kilometres of the sea, it’s suffering from a bad case of out of sight, out of mind.

Our solution is simple. Bring the ocean to the city.

We need your help to submerge Bristol into a wild and watery wonderland this October. From sculptures to street art, photography exhibitions to pedal-powered cinemas, Wildscreen’s Witness the Wild (WTW) festival will see Bristol submerged in nature in unexpected places across the city, no flippers required.

This October, we’re bringing together local community groups, artists, scientists, wildlife filmmakers and photographers to transform two concrete roundabouts into oceanic sanctuaries, giving thousands of people the opportunity to dive beneath the waves and explore the ocean depths for themselves and discover how we can all do little things to help protect it.

Though vast, our ocean is not limitless and it needs our help. 275 million tonnes of plastic waste is generated every year around the world. That’s the equivalent weight of over 2.3 million blue whales - the largest animal to have ever lived. That’s a lot of rubbish. Only 5 percent of all plastic waste is recycled, and the rest of it has to go somewhere –usually in our ocean or landfill. We can all really easily help by being better at recycling and using less single-use plastic, especially things like straws, which get used once and then thrown away.

WTW will engage local communities and businesses with our throwaway culture and its impacts on our ocean, bringing them together with amazing artists to create beautiful instruments and sculptures from single-use plastics and fly-tipped rubbish sourced from within the communities themselves.

Together we’ll tell the story of plastic, the impact it’s having on our world and how we can all make little changes to help reduce it. Our sculptures will quite literally be rubbish.

The creations will be exhibited in our two wild reefs – the Bear Pit and another soon-to-be-announced roundabout - and be supported by films screenings, art, talks and lots more floating around the city.

WTW will breathe new life into a soon-to-be-announced roundabout which is currently underused, unwelcoming and lifeless yet situated in Bristol’s most diverse area. It will be transformed into a wild, bright and welcoming environment that the surrounding community will be proud of and people from all over the city will come to immerse themselves in. 

If people can’t go to the wild, we’ll take it to them! And here’s how we’ll do it.

With your help, we will…

• Commission 8+ marine-themed art murals by local artists
• Run rubbish community sculpture workshops with local artists
• Create and install a rubbish sculpture trail
• Clean up the streets and waterways of Bristol from a tide of fly-tipping and make sweet rubbish musical instruments out of it
• Organise pedal-powered outdoor wildlife film screenings
• Install a 24/7, waterproof, completely recycled/recyclable outdoor wildlife photography exhibition

Wildscreen is Bristol-based conservation charity run by a small but perfectly formed team of six, with a mixed bag of skills including zoology, tech, event management and marketing.

Every other year since 1982, Wildscreen has created the world’s biggest wildlife film and TV Festival in Bristol. We bring together over 800 of the world’s most talented wildlife filmmakers and photographers for a week of premieres, master classes, screenings and parties. It’s also the home of the ‘Green Oscars’. We’re proud to call Sir David Attenborough our patron and friend.

In October 2016, we delivered our biggest and most ambitious public outreach programme in our 34-year history. Throughout September and October, the natural world took over Bristol, through a packed programme of pop-up and pedal-powered wildlife film screenings, endangered species street art and an open-air, environmentally friendly 24/7 photography exhibition.

Now when people go for a bite to eat at Baba Ganoush on Bristol’s Stapleton Road, they not only walk out with happy tummies, they also know what about the world’s only scaly mammal and the world’s most trafficked mammal, the pangolin.

See what we did last time: http://www.wildscreen.org/festival/public-events/

45,000 members of the Bristol public loved Witness the Wild in 2016 so much that we thought we would do it again this year but make it even bigger.

When we’re not doing Festivals, we are beavering on our other two projects – Arkive and Exchange. Arkive is the world’s biggest online encyclopaedia about the natural world, featuring over 16,000 species, as well as education resources and games. And it’s all free. Exchange is a communications hub for conservation organisations providing them with free and affordable films, photos and access to expertise to help them campaign and educate the public about the species and places they are working so hard to protect.  

£6,000 will help us to pay for space, the artists, the workshops and the materials that we need in order create our tide of change. And if we raise £3,000 from over 40 of you lovely people super quickly, Bristol Green Capital Partnership will match fund it by 50%!

Any extra money we raise will mean we can host even more free pedal-powered wildlife film screenings, paint more wild walls around the city and put up more photography exhibitions. We could even spread our wings into some more nests around Bristol.

We appreciate any support you can give us and we’ve got lots of lovely rewards to say thank you.

AND every person that pledges will be entered into a draw to win a full week pass to the Wildscreen Festival in October 2018, where you can hang out with over 800 of the world’s best wildlife filmmakers, photographers and celebrities, attend dozens of film screenings, masterclasses, wild parties and take a walk on the green carpet at our Panda Awards aka the ‘Green Oscars’. Twit two!

And if you can’t spare any cash there are lots of other ways you can help us make this happen for example you can share our campaign on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, lend us your legs to power our pedal-powered cinemas, or your time and expertise to help us ensure Bristol makes a splash this October. If you want to help, say hello to us at [email protected].