Share this page

Planet Purbeck Festival

Planet Purbeck connected people, businesses, and conservation groups to protect Purbeck’s nature and tackle climate challenges. Its 2024 festival showcased the area’s beauty and encouraged community action.

Overview

Learning from the success of their 2023 event, the team focused on creating experiences that delivered real community benefits. In 2024, they hosted a series of free events across two weekends in Swanage, designed to help people discover, value, and embrace nature.

Highlights included Rewilding Our Seas and Celebration of Purbeck—public meetings featuring inspiring speakers and films—and the Nature and Wellbeing Fair, which brought stalls, live music, and refreshments to the seafront. With widespread publicity and open access, these events welcomed the whole Purbeck community and strengthened connections between people and the natural world.

  • SDF grant awarded: £5000
  • % of total funding awarded: 26.7%

Other sources of funding:

  • Volunteer and in-kind contributions including event delivery, planning, professional services, and equipment kept costs low and impact high.Total in kind Value: £9,745

    Volunteer Hours: Stewarding, legal advice, accounting, press releases, event coordination, and management.

    In-Kind Support: Professional services (comms, project planning), discounted rates, and equipment loans.

    Impact: Enabled free, well-publicised community events without significant financial outlay.

Following the success of 2023, the 2024 Planet Purbeck Festival set out to make an even greater impact.

The aims were to broaden attendance and reach a wider demographic, improve promotion and communication, gather feedback from hosts and attendees to inform future events, engage potential sponsors, and showcase environmental partners and their projects. These objectives shaped the planning and delivery of the Festival.

Objectives

Each event within the 2024 Festival had clear goals to engage and inspire the community:

  • Rewilding Our Seas shared Greenpeace’s climate campaign, promoted Planet Purbeck to marine enthusiasts, introduced seabed mapping, and connected science to local issues.
  • Celebration of Purbeck highlighted major restoration projects, showed how farming and nature can work together, inspired young people through Purbeck Goes Wild, and showcased the National Trust’s role.
  • Nature and Wellbeing Fair aimed to grow the Festival’s reach, connect widely, give stallholders clarity, and establish the Fair as a lasting annual tradition.

The 2024 Planet Purbeck Festival built on previous success by increasing footfall at two of its three events and attracting a diverse audience, including young people through Purbeck Goes Wild.

Feedback from hosts and partners was overwhelmingly positive, gathered through surveys and an October review meeting to inform future planning.

Rewilding Our Seas was near capacity, featuring excellent speakers and securing support from marine conservation groups for the seabed mapping project, strengthened by scientific input from George Short.

Celebration of Purbeck offered inspiring talks on nature-friendly farming and restoration projects, with a lively panel discussion involving key partners, despite slightly lower attendance than last year.

The Nature and Wellbeing Fair delivered a vibrant day of live music and diverse stalls, grouped into clear themes for the first time, and generated strong visual content for future promotion.

The 2024 Planet Purbeck Festival strengthened community-led nature recovery and supported local businesses by keeping spending within Purbeck. Events attracted diverse audiences, including young people through Purbeck Goes Wild, and engaged farmers and land managers via Wild Purbeck.

Over 20 volunteers contributed more than 270 hours to planning and delivery. Local organisations and small businesses amplified their messages and enabled projects that might not otherwise happen.

The Festival also boosted Planet Purbeck’s profile, increasing donations and growing social media followers to 4,700, while enthusiasm helped drive renewed support for Swanage Streams.

Extended benefits

Planet Purbeck committed to continuing its annual festival, building on lessons learned and feedback from partners. The aim is to grow participation across the wider Purbeck community year after year, ensuring the festival remained a catalyst for engagement, collaboration, and nature recovery.

A key lesson from the 2024 Festival was the importance of speaker selection. Presentations needed to be both informative and engaging, and at least one speaker with a high profile in popular media proved essential for reaching a wider audience beyond those already committed to environmental issues.

Funding options within Dorset National Landscape

×