Whether you’re brand new to EF! or have been coming for decades — join us to celebrate the 30th ever EF! summer gathering in the UK!

Exciting update: workshop blurbs online now!

 

💜 We are very excit­ed to announce the 30th ever Earth First! sum­mer gath­er­ing in the UK! From 25th-29th July at Crabap­ple, a gor­geous com­mu­ni­ty orchard in Shrews­bury in the West Mid­lands. We invite you to five days of work­shops, skill shares, sol­i­dar­i­ty, social­is­ing, and con­spir­ing the destruc­tion of cap­i­tal­ism, patri­archy, and all the forces of dom­i­na­tion of humans and nature ✊ Trav­el info here, acces­si­bil­i­ty info here, info about well­be­ing here.

🌈 It’s a space for rad­i­cal thinkers, rebel­lious souls, and curi­ous minds, bring­ing peo­ple togeth­er to strength­en and spread the rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal resis­tance move­ment across these north­ern isles that we call home. Join us! ☺️

🌱 Learn about cur­rent and past envi­ron­men­tal strug­gles here and around the world, about (anti-)repression and move­ment vic­to­ries, green anar­chism and bio­cen­trism, queer ecol­o­gy and anti-colo­nial land jus­tice. Or get your hands dirty in some of our more prac­ti­cal work­shops, from direct action, skills to solar pow­er, night nav­i­ga­tion, tech secu­ri­ty and more. Or just relax and enjoy the beau­ti­ful sur­round­ings and let loose on the dance floor! 🪩🕺

🥕 There will be three veg­an meals a day, cooked by the won­der­ful Eat­First! col­lectve, dona­tion-based. 🍝

🫖 Tea, cof­fee, cake and a tug shop will be pro­vid­ed by the amaz­ing Veg­gies col­lec­tive ☕

🎲 There will be a kids’ space and pro­gramme too!

🚽 We’ll have com­post toi­lets and even show­ers this year 🚿😯

🐥 Are you new to EF!, have nev­er been, maybe feel­ing a bit ner­vous? No wor­ries, there are won­der­ful humans who will show you around, explain how things work, and sit down and have a cup of tea with!

🌳 Do you want to share sto­ries from the past three decades of EF! in the UK, offer a work­shop, or help out with the kids’ space? Ques­tions on acces­si­bil­i­ty, trans­port (there will be a shut­tle ser­vice from Shrews­bury train sta­tion) or food? Get in touch! earthfirstuk@riseup.net

🦮🐕‍🦺🐕 Dogs 🐕 🐕‍🦺🦮 We have now reached our capac­i­ty for dogs at the gath­er­ing. We have a lim­it on the num­ber of dogs we can accom­mo­date this year because the site is a sen­si­tive habi­tat with nest­ing barn owls, fledg­ling birds and small mam­mals liv­ing in the fields and woods. 🦮 If you have an assis­tance dog that you need to bring to the gath­er­ing then please do email us before the gath­er­ing to reg­is­ter your dog with: earthfirstuk@riseup.net

🔥 Bring your friends, com­rades, ener­gy and ideas, and please spread the word! 📢

🚐 Please note that (depend­ing on the weath­er) we might have very lim­it­ed park­ing space and CANNOT guar­an­tee that you can bring your car or live-in vehi­cle onto the site. If you need your vehi­cle for acces­si­bil­i­ty rea­sons, you will be pri­ori­tised — please send us an email! 🚗

 

Pricing info

  • How much mon­ey?
EF is as DIY as it gets, and doing it our­selves also means fund­ing it our­selves. No one prof­its off of EF. No one gets paid.
EF gath­er­ings always run on a dona­tion basis, and no one is turned away for lack of funds. As a rough esti­mate, we ask that on aver­age peo­ple pay £8 per day for food (three meals) and around £20 for the camp, depend­ing on what you can afford.
The total expense of the gath­er­ings is hard to say accu­rate­ly before­hand, we esti­mate that it’s around 20 pounds per per­son (assum­ing there will be around 300 peo­ple) plus food.
At the wel­come desk you will be able to donate what­ev­er feels right, based on ‘sol­i­dar­i­ty pric­ing’:
    
  • Sol­i­dar­i­ty pric­ing: Have more, pay more. Have less, pay less.
Here’s a lit­tle guide to help you judge how much you can afford com­pared to oth­ers, it’s not just about income, oth­er fac­tors are impor­tant. Class, wealth, and expe­ri­ences of sys­temic oppres­sion all play a part. Remem­ber, it’s just a guide, an imper­fect way to cre­ate a more eco­nom­i­cal­ly lib­er­at­ing mod­el while we work to smash cap­i­tal­ism and cre­ate dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ic sys­tems.
  • Some fac­tors that MIGHT allow you to afford more:
- Hav­ing above aver­age income
- Own­ing land or prop­er­ty
- Being like­ly to inher­it prop­er­ty or wealth
- Hav­ing sig­nif­i­cant wealth, sav­ings, or invest­ments
- Being eas­i­ly able to meet basic needs and able to afford lux­u­ries (hol­i­days, take­away)
- Hav­ing recog­nised edu­ca­tion­al back­ground and qual­i­fi­ca­tions (‘good’ schools, degrees, post­grad etc.) 
- Being eas­i­ly able to get well-paid work
- Hav­ing a safe­ty net or strong social sup­port net­works (e.g. a par­ents’ house to retreat to, friends with mon­ey etc.)
  • Some fac­tors that MIGHT reduce how much you can afford:
- Earn­ing less than aver­age income
- Sup­port­ing depen­dents or hav­ing car­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties (chil­dren, rel­a­tives, part­ners etc.)
- Hav­ing dis­abil­i­ties or long term ill-health
- Reg­u­lar­ly being in con­tact with state/institutional vio­lence
- Pre­car­i­ous migra­tion sta­tus (eg being a refugee, asy­lum seek­er, or per­son with­out papers)
- Being unable to legal­ly work
- Expe­ri­enc­ing finan­cial dis­tress (eg. unex­pect­ed court fees, los­ing a job, sud­den rent increas­es)
- Expe­ri­enc­ing sys­temic oppres­sion due to things such as race, class, gen­der, neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty, sex­u­al­i­ty.
No one is turned away for lack of funds, please don’t let cost put you off attend­ing!
We all have dif­fer­ent rela­tion­ships to mon­ey and we encour­age every­one to be hon­est with them­selves. The emo­tions that come up when we talk about what we can afford can often cloud our judge­ment. Cap­i­tal­ism breeds a cul­ture of scarci­ty — for some this feels like emo­tion­al insta­bil­i­ty and uncer­tain­ty, and for oth­ers this looks like mate­r­i­al pover­ty and a lack of resources. It is impos­si­ble to talk about things like class, mon­ey, wealth, or income with­out think­ing about sys­temic oppres­sions like racism or ableism and yes, it’s com­pli­cat­ed, but let’s do the best we can.
There are lots of hid­den costs involved with gath­er­ings like EF. Some stuff can’t be found in bins or bor­rowed and, while we try to keep costs down, there is equip­ment we would like to pur­chase to make sum­mer camps like EF more acces­si­ble in the future (eg track mat­ting for wheel­chair acces­si­bil­i­ty, a minibus, light­ing, solar pan­els.) By donat­ing more gen­er­ous­ly you are help­ing achieve this!