Truck Foundation

Mali D G have been our major charity for five years now (£7,000 per annum!)
Download the Mali D G charity report here

The divide between those who need charity and those comfortable enough to provide it has narrowed and in some ways disappeared. Global heating is acknowledged even by the Bush administration. Climate change is no longer an esoteric concept but something that is already affecting the developed world on a daily basis. Africa is no longer an over-there place on the news. Deforestation in Argentina affects the whole globe. It is no longer possible to see the world as anything except an undivided interconnected whole - our actions here have repercussions everywhere.

It's tempting to respond to the barrage of bad news by hiding under the duvet, but that's not Truck: we'd like to think there's another approach, that of inspiring change through positive action.

Our friends at A Greener Festival are making people aware of the connection between festivals and the environment, and we're all trying to minimise the footprint of our events; I believe that the effect of an event like Truck is more than resources used or saved - being in the natural environment and participating in an amazing artistic experience leads somehow to an implicit empathy with that environment. Magic performances, beautiful harmony and rhythm, dancing in a field, gazing at the moon rising at 4am over the cornfield - all these can (and for most at Truck, do) lead to what pyschologists call transpersonal experiences - what poets and mystics call the collective unconscious. In these moments our place in the world and nature seems obvious; we are part of it not consumers of it. Maybe we don't always act on this knowledge in the 363 days when it is not Truck and we're back in the 'real world'... but increasingly it is easy to do so in small ways. But something we can begin to do without lifting a finger is start to change our values and beliefs, for only then will real change become possible.

"We need most of all to renew that love and empathy for nature that we lost when we began our love affair with city life... over half the Earth's people live in cities, and they hardly ever see, feel or hear the natural world. Therefore our first duty if we are green should be to convince them that the real world is the living Earth and that they and their city lives are a part of it and wholly dependent on it for their existence"
Sir James Lovelock, scientist

"Corn in the fields, listen to the rice when the wind blows 'cross the water..."
King Harvest, The Band

"In changing our ideas, we have to look forward to the eventual target of a human society in which population, use of resources, disposal of waste, and environment are generally in healthy balance. Above all we have to look at life with respect and wonder. We need an ethical system in which the natural world has value not just for human welfare but for and of itself. The universe is something internal as well as external"
Sir Crispin Tickell, government scientific advisor

"...I ignite the beauty of the plains, I sparkle in the waters, I burn in the sun, and the moon and the stars... I adorn all of the Earth, I am the breeze that nurtures all things green... I am the rain coming from the dew that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life. Let us likewise rejoice."
Hildegard of Bingen, 12th Century visionary poet

Through our new venture the Truck Foundation we have begun some small steps of our own, working with the youngest local people who represent our future. We hope these will provide an inspiration to others to start similar initiatives.

From the first day of next month, Truck Foundation is embarking upon a number of workshops with children and their families. The workshops will encourage creativity and freedom as people have the space to work within and learn from the natural world around them.These seem like small pieces of a giant difficult jigsaw with acres of blue sky which needs the participation of all of us to complete. But of course the world around us in not a jigsaw, it is alive and constantly changing. Small local efforts like the Truck Foundation can, like the faraway beating of butterfly wings, provoke profound effects. The new Truck logo is based on the dead tree you see next to the Truck stage. Whilst it's difficult to change the dead branches of our consumptive big-brother culture,we all have the tools - imagination, love, creativity - to plant new trees and start the flowering of a new culture with respect for the Earth we live on, and are part of, at its heart. To get involved, or to attend one of the workshops, email foundation@thisistruck.com or call (01235) 821262