Earth First! Access Statement Summer Gathering 2025

Intro

The Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing 2025 will be held at Brithdir Mawr, Pem­brokeshire, Wales. The clos­est train sta­tion is Fish­guard Har­bour or Fish­guard and Good­wick.

This access state­ment is a work-in-progress. If you have any spe­cif­ic ques­tions which are not cov­ered in this doc­u­ment, or any access needs or requests, please don’t hes­i­tate to email us. [earthfirstuk@riseup.net]

There will also be an drop-in ses­sion on Wednes­day 6th where folks are invit­ed to come along and chat to some­one from the acces­si­bil­i­ty work­ing group to ask any ques­tions r.e access and site lay­out, and to work out how we can sup­port each oth­er dur­ing the gath­er­ing  Also, if you’d like to get involved in the acces­si­bil­i­ty work­ing group, please come along to this ses­sion and make your­self known!

If you have any oth­er ques­tions or requests through­out the gath­er­ing, or are unable to make it to the drop-in, chat to the friend­ly folk on wel­come desk.

This page is organ­ised into 5 main sec­tions:

1. How it works has basic info about EF! and how gath­er­ings are run.
2. Before the gath­er­ing has impor­tant info about trav­el­ling to the gath­er­ing.
3. Phys­i­cal access describes the site and work­shop spaces.
4. Dur­ing the gath­er­ing has var­i­ous points of infor­ma­tion about things like our arrange­ments for food and well­be­ing, COVID, dogs, and oth­er use­ful stuff.
5. Kit list

We wel­come feed­back about how the gath­er­ing can be more acces­si­ble, equal­ly if you have an offer­ing to make the gath­er­ing more acces­si­ble, please get in touch.

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How it works!

Earth First! Gath­er­ings are a place for our move­ments and peo­ple to come togeth­er, meet one anoth­er, learn from one anoth­er, eat togeth­er, dance togeth­er, share ideas, knowl­edge and resources, and prac­tice build­ing the world we’d like to bring forth. They hap­pen twice a year, although the Win­ter Moot tends to be calmer and small­er, allow­ing us to hun­ker down and reflect togeth­er.

We oper­ate under an umbrel­la of shared val­ues and under­stand­ings relat­ed to green anar­chism. Large­ly, this means that we work to dis­rupt and over­turn hier­ar­chies of pow­er, envi­sion­ing and build­ing ways that we can exist togeth­er beyond hier­ar­chi­cal struc­tures, and that we are com­mit­ted to an eco­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion. We are anti-cap­i­tal­ist, against all forms of oppres­sion, and believe that the earth and all its beings exist in their own right, out­side of their val­ue to us as humans.

This year, the Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Gath­er­ing will be hap­pen­ing along­side Earth First!, bring­ing anti-speciesism direct­ly into con­ver­sa­tions at EF!. We will share the site and learn togeth­er how to bring into prac­tice a new world in which we are all free. 

Cru­cial­ly, we are all human (if you’re read­ing this at least!) and none of us are ide­o­log­i­cal­ly pris­tine. Earth First! is a space of shar­ing knowl­edge and learn­ing from one anoth­er. Respect­ful curios­i­ty and dis­cus­sion are wel­come here; big­otry and dic­ta­tor­ship are not.

We are all crew!

Earth First! gath­er­ings strive to oper­ate under anar­chist prin­ci­ples, and as a result we are all crew! 

What do we mean by this?

Earth First! and its gath­er­ings belong to all those of us who feel aligned to its prin­ci­ples. No one is paid to be here; no one is ‘in charge’. All of the work which goes into the gath­er­ings are done by peo­ple just like you! 

There are work­ing groups who work togeth­er to put on the gath­er­ing, as well as a large num­ber of peo­ple offer­ing work­shops, kitchen roles and well­be­ing sup­port across the few days. If you’d like to be involved in any of the above, talk to some­one in the rel­e­vant group!

Dur­ing the gath­er­ing itself, there are still many jobs to be done! Whether that’s help­ing out in the kitchen, clean­ing or tidy­ing the site or facil­i­ties, time­keep­ing, fix­ing some­thing or just gen­er­al­ly help­ing things run smooth­ly; every­one is need­ed to help the gath­er­ings come togeth­er. If you see a job that needs doing, do it! If you’re not sure how, grab a friend or chat to some­one who might know (such as some­one on the Wel­come Desk).

We are active­ly try­ing to move away from the idea of a ‘ser­vice econ­o­my’ — the notion that a small group are ‘putting on an event’ and a larg­er group are ‘attend­ing the event’. At Earth First!, we are all putting on an event and we are all attend­ing an event. We do this togeth­er, in what­ev­er ways we are each able, and sup­port one anoth­er to do what we can.

We are all crew!

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Before the Gathering

There’s no need to pre-reg­is­ter or tell us that you’re com­ing — just show up!

Welcome Desk

Upon your arrival, please head to the wel­come desk where you’ll be greet­ed by the love­ly peo­ple who’ll give you key infor­ma­tion like where to camp, where the toi­lets are, what time you’ll be fed and also answer any ques­tions you might have. Impor­tant­ly, it’s the wel­come desk who count num­bers for food, so if you don’t go via the wel­come desk and let them know how long you’re stay­ing, you won’t be count­ed into num­bers for meals!

There will be print­ed pro­grammes con­tain­ing lots of the infor­ma­tion in this doc­u­ment as well as oth­er impor­tant things like the anti-oppres­sion state­ment and a blank timetable. Because the sched­ule of work­shops is sub­ject to change, these will be writ­ten up on a board, so you can fill in your own sched­ule in your pro­gramme.

There will be a board with a list of tasks that need doing that you can sign up to at the wel­come desk too. We know some folks find it eas­i­er to socialise and set­tle in if theres a task to do!

At the wel­come desk you may want to men­tion if you have any access needs and who­ev­er is at the desk will point you towards some­one who can help you. There will be some folks avail­able at the wel­come desk who can show you around the site.

Costs

Earth First! runs on dona­tions and we ask those who can to give towards run­ning costs. We’d love to be liv­ing in a post-mon­ey soci­ety, but at the moment we rely on these dona­tions to cov­er food at the gath­er­ing, and oth­er costs such as buy­ing and trans­port­ing kit.

Please bring cash! There will be a sug­gest­ed dona­tions guide at the Wel­come Desk; this will be about £5 per day for food, plus a flat £10–50 for the site costs. If you are able to give more, please do (for exam­ple if you have reg­u­lar dis­pos­able income or come from a finan­cial­ly com­fort­able back­ground or are gonna inher­it loads of dosh).

Equal­ly, if you would strug­gle to pay the sug­gest­ed dona­tion price, do not feel pres­sure to do so; we firm­ly believe it is up to those who have more access to wealth to pay the way for those who do not.

Getting to the Gathering

The clos­est train sta­tion is Fish­guard & Good­wick.

There will hope­ful­ly be shut­tles from Fish­guard to the EF! Site (assum­ing some car dri­vers offer to do this) or alter­nate­ly you could get the bus part of the way then walk, or cycle. More trav­el infor­ma­tion is avail­able here

If you have a vehi­cle and are able to help us with shut­tling, please get in touch. [earthfirstuk@riseup.net]

There is also a sig­nal group chat for co-ordi­nat­ing trav­el (e.g. lift-shares or pub­lic trans­port bud­dies) to and from the site. Please email us to join.

** Will there be park­ing on site??

Lim­it­ed park­ing — please don’t bring a car unless you real­ly need to, please don’t bring a car with emp­ty seats or leave with emp­ty seats!

**Bik­ing?

The cycle from the train sta­tion to Brithdir Mawr is about an hour, or you can get a bus part of the way (to the Gold­en Lion Hotel in New­port) and then walk 40mins

** Will there be a wheel­chair acces­si­ble shut­tle this year?

Cur­rent­ly we don’t have this sort­ed, if you can offer this then please get in touch.

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Site and Physical Access

Terrain

The gath­er­ing will be held across two large adjoin­ing fields. Both fields are gen­tly sloped, with some flat­ter ground towards one end. One of the fields is quite uneven / bumpy.

Key infra­struc­ture (the work­shop tents, toi­lets, water point, eat­ing area) will be on the flat­ter part, and there will also be some camp­ing space here for those who need it, although we expect most peo­ple will be camped fur­ther down the field. We will be ask­ing peo­ple to self-allo­cate camp­ing space depend­ing on their own needs, please ask peo­ple if you’re unsure or need help find­ing a spot to camp.

We will also have access to some wood­ed area for ham­mocks.

We have 120m of rub­berised track mat­ting, which will be around the main area, con­nect­ing essen­tial infra­struc­ture.

Water

The site is usu­al­ly spring-fed, and there are two taps on site. This spring is shared with neigh­bours so we will also be bring­ing our own IBC full of water, to ensure there will be enough water for us all through­out the gath­er­ing. Please be mind­ful how much water you’re using and don’t skimp on hand­wash­ing!!

If you are trav­el­ling by vehi­cle, you could also bring water to reduce the strain we will be putting on the spring.

Don’t for­get to bring a water bot­tle!

Toilets, Sinks & Showers

We will be bring our own com­post toi­lets which will have sev­er­al steps.  We will also bring an acces­si­ble toi­let of our own; this will be a chair with a toi­let seat in a 3x3m gaze­bo, on a flat part of the site con­nect­ed to the acces­si­ble track­way.

There are two plumbed-in sinks on the site, which are fed by the spring.

All facil­i­ties are gen­der neu­tral and we are all respon­si­ble for keep­ing them clean and tidy.

Workshop Spaces

The work­shops will be held in large mar­quees on the field. There will be paths and track-mat­ting between these. We will be able to open the sides of the mar­quees to allow for bet­ter ven­ti­la­tion, or to make more space for wheel­chair users to get through.

Dur­ing work­shops, you are free to do what you need in order to be engaged and / or com­fort­able! Stim­ming, stretch­ing, mov­ing around, tak­ing notes, fid­get toys and what­ev­er else are all wel­come. You are also free to leave and come back as you wish.

Fires

Don’t start them! If you are trav­el­ling by vehi­cle please bring fire­wood if you can so we can have a com­mu­nal fire in the evening.

Parking and Vehicles

There is a grav­el road lead­ing into the site, which leads into a grav­el carpark and one of the fields. If you park in the field and get stuck it will be real­ly annoy­ing and time con­sum­ing to push you out!

Accommodation

We will be camp­ing and you will need to bring a tent, sleep­ing bag, roll mat and what­ev­er else you may need to be com­fy.

If camp­ing is a bar­ri­er to you com­ing, or you will be unable to bring the kit you need, get in touch with us and we will see if we can link you up with some­one who could lend you kit/we can help you find alter­na­tive acco­mo­da­tion.

Kitchen

The kitchen will be a ‘camp kitchen’ set-up. It will be close to the work­shops spaces, and con­nect­ed by track mat­ting.

Tell the wel­come desk if you have any aller­gies. Aller­gens will be list­ed next to the food at meal­times.

There will be plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties to help in the kitchen, for exam­ple chop­ping veg or wash­ing up, and this is a great way to get involved in the gath­er­ing if you’re not sure what oth­er jobs to do! Sign-up for kitchen shifts will hap­pen in the morn­ing meet­ing.

You need to bring your own mug but not your own bowl/cuttlery/plate

Hygiene is real­ly impor­tant when we are eat­ing in big groups and hand wash­ing is manda­to­ry! Don’t be the per­son that gives us all dysen­try xx

Food will be served three times a day, and all food at the gath­er­ing will be veg­an (and there­fore free of the major aller­gens crus­taceans, milk, eggs, fish, and mol­luscs).

Because we won’t know how many peo­ple are attend­ing the gath­er­ing, meal­times might vary, but the aim is to serve break­fast between 8am and 9am (morn­ing meet­ing will be at 9am), lunch between 1pm and 2pm, and din­ner between 6pm and 8pm.

Food queues may be long — if you can’t stand for a long time then please push in the queue, or if you don’t feel com­fort­able doing tell some­one at the wel­come desk or in the kitchen and we will arrange some­one to bring you food or for you to skip the queue.

There will be a veg­an tuck shop run by Veg­gies and there will be teas and cof­fees avail­able through­out the gath­er­ing. This will be set up under sev­er­al gaze­bos. There will be pump-urns with hot water on 80cm high tables. You can vol­un­teer to keep this area clean and tidy and keep the urns topped up dur­ing the gath­er­ing.

There will be alco­holic drinks avail­able for cheap some evenings, and the mon­ey will go towards sup­port­ing the gath­er­ing. You are wel­come to bring your own snacks, as long as they are veg­an and don’t con­tain nuts. Please bring cash to pay for snacks and drinks!

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During the Gathering

Quiet Space, Wellbeing and First Aid, and Caucus space

We will have a des­ig­nat­ed qui­et tent on site, which every­one is wel­come to use for qui­et reflec­tion, prayer or to take some time away from the parts of the gath­er­ing which can be loud or over­whelm­ing. Please be aware of keep­ing the noise lev­el low if you are near the qui­et tent. There will also be ear plugs avail­able from the well­be­ing tent.

There will be a tent or mar­quee space held by the well-being col­lec­tive. Any­one is wel­come to use this space if they are feel­ing over­whelmed, strug­gling, or just need a qui­et space to talk. The well-being col­lec­tive will not have a con­stant pres­ence in the well-being space, but will be roam­ing dur­ing the gath­er­ing incase you need — they will make them­selves known at the morn­ing meet­ing, or some­one at the wel­come desk can help you iden­ti­fy who they are!

The well­be­ing team can help you if you are feel­ing unwell, strug­gling to make friends, or need some­one to talk to but are not able to solve deep-seat­ed and long-term con­flicts between peo­ple. They can how­ev­er sup­port peo­ple to set bound­aries or com­mu­ni­cate needs to each oth­er. If you would like to con­tact the well­be­ing col­lec­tive before the gath­er­ing then please email us on earthfirstuk@riseup.net to be put in touch.

We’ll also have a space set up for cau­cus­es to use for shar­ing circles/caucus cir­cles — these are spaces where peo­ple of shared iden­ti­ties can get togeth­er to dis­cuss their expe­ri­ences in the gath­er­ing, the wider move­ment, and the world. If an issue aris­es, it can be help­ful to talk to peo­ple who have been through some­thing sim­i­lar. Any­one is wel­come to organ­ise a cir­cle and put it onto the pro­gramme. The well-being group can help facil­i­tate peo­ple form­ing shar­ing cir­cles, so feel free to get in touch with them if you’d like some assis­tance. There’s some guid­ance about what they typ­i­cal­ly look like here: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ef!sharingcircles.

There will be first aiders on site and a first aid kit avail­able at the wel­come desk and at the well­be­ing tent, and first aiders will be point­ed out dur­ing the morn­ing cir­cle each day.

These spaces will be in the main field with the work­shop spaces and will be sign­post­ed.

Kids’ Space

The kids’ space will be in a mar­quee, near to the oth­er work­shop spaces or in the woods. There will be activ­i­ties for kids includ­ing fire start­ing, wide games, singing, crafts, (though young peo­ple are wel­come at most oth­er work­shops!)

The kids’ space is not a creche and we encour­age par­ents and care­givers to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for their kids and check in with them reg­u­lar­ly. The kids space is facil­i­tat­ed by a mixed gen­der group and is run by teach­ers, par­ents and non-par­ents. If you want to hang out with kids at the gath­er­ing, please email us or go to the kids space to sign up on the rota.

COVID

EF! Recog­nis­es that COVID-19 presents an ongo­ing dan­ger, par­tic­u­lar­ly at large in-per­son gath­er­ings. We are ask­ing that every­body takes a covid test before arriv­ing on-site, and does not attend if that test comes back pos­i­tive. We will have masks avail­able at the wel­come desk too — because the gath­er­ing is out­side the risk from COVID is reduced but we still encour­age EF!ers to take pre­cau­tions.

If you test pos­i­tive while at the site then we will not just kick you out. We will try to find some­one will­ing to dri­ve you home and/or space to self iso­late. If nec­es­sary, we will pay for trans­port and/or space to self iso­late. We will make sure you are fed and hydrat­ed!

Smoking & vaping

Please ask con­sent before smok­ing around oth­er peo­ple at the gath­er­ing. Not every­one is com­fort­able to be around oth­ers who are smok­ing & vap­ing — for exam­ple some peo­ple have asth­ma or are try­ing to quit them­selves. If you want to smoke/vape dur­ing a work­shop you are attend­ing, please step out­side the mar­quee whilst you do so.

Dogs

Dogs are wel­come at the gath­er­ing, please keep dogs on leads.

Wifi, Phones & Electricity

There is no wifi at the gath­er­ing, and we encour­age every­one to leave their phone switched off and in their tent dur­ing work­shops. This is both for secu­ri­ty rea­sons and to enable us to con­nect more direct­ly with oth­ers at the gath­er­ing.

We won’t have mains pow­er and there­fore will unfor­tu­nate­ly not be able to offer charg­ing facil­i­ties except for nec­es­sary devices (e.g. assis­tive tech­nol­o­gy, elec­tric wheel­chairs).

We are work­ing on get­ting access to a fridge for stor­ing med­ica­tion that needs to be refrig­er­at­ed. We will update this doc­u­ment when we have con­firmed this. Please email us if you need access to a fridge

Wellbeing

In recog­ni­tion that the gath­er­ing may not be an easy ride for every­body — whether that’s because of low mood or ener­gy, con­flict with oth­er EF!ers, gen­er­al rage at the cisheteropa­tri­ar­chal colo­nial cap­i­tal­ist hellscape, or what­ev­er else — the well­be­ing col­lec­tive are on hand to offer sup­port. They are a small team of lov­ing peo­ple, like you engaged in eco­log­i­cal resis­tance, who can lend an ear and a cup­pa if you need some­one to talk to or decom­press with, be avail­able if you have requests or con­cerns regard­ing the well­be­ing of your­self or oth­ers, and help facil­i­tate peo­ple in con­flict to share space dur­ing the gath­er­ing.

On this, they are under no pre­tences that they can resolve long-stand­ing con­flict over the course of a week­end, nor is that their objec­tive; their aim is to ensure that every­body (as far as is pos­si­ble) feels com­fort­able at the gath­er­ing and is safe to attend. Please also reach out to us before the gath­er­ing if there is any­thing you’d like to raise in advance.

In their prac­tices, they are informed by the prin­ci­ples of trans­for­ma­tive jus­tice, and reject a can­cel cul­ture which dehu­man­is­es us all. With this in mind, we request that peo­ple talk to some­one from well­be­ing if you are expe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ty or dis­com­fort with oth­ers at the gath­er­ing, so that they can sup­port you through it with­out hav­ing to involve large num­bers of oth­er atten­dees.

We also encour­age peo­ple to self-organ­ise sup­port where they feel it is nec­es­sary, or make sug­ges­tions to some­one from well­be­ing — for exam­ple, in the past, the well-being space has been used for inde­pen­dent trans cir­cles, and BIPOC cir­cles. Let the well­be­ing col­lec­tive know if you want to use the space for rea­sons such as this. They will make them­selves known in the morn­ing meet­ings.

Anti-Oppression Statement

Earth First! has an anti-oppres­sion state­ment which we ask every­one com­ing to the gath­er­ing to read and fol­low. You can read the anti-oppres­sion state­ment here: earthfirst.uk/solidarity-statement/

Have we missed something?

We know this state­ment might not have all of the infor­ma­tion every­one needs. We know some folks may have access needs that clash or things that aren’t achiev­able when we have lim­it­ed resources in a remote loca­tion. If we’ve missed some­thing, or you have spe­cif­ic needs or ques­tions, please get in touch.

Equal­ly, if you have skills, ideas, or equip­ment to offer which might help make this gath­er­ing (or future EF! gath­er­ings) more acces­si­ble, we’d love to hear from you too.

Con­tact us at earthfirstuk@riseup.net

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What to bring with you

This list is incom­plete, everyone’s needs and car­ry­ing capac­i­ty are dif­fer­ent, hope­ful­ly it’s help­ful…

• Tent, sleep­ing bag, roll mat
• A cup
• Toi­letries and med­ica­tion
• Eye mask and earplugs
• Spare jumpers and blan­kets
• Spare clothes
• Water­proofs
• Sun cream and insect repel­lant (e.g. cin­tronel­la essen­tial oils)
• Cash for snacks, dona­tions, teas/coffees, food, booze, merch & zines
• Charged bat­tery pack
• Fire­wood
• Crafts
• Musi­cal instru­ments
• Water bot­tle

See you soon!! <3