A saucy Santa, an exceptional Elf, a raucous Rudolph and to top it off 2 polar bears and a pool! It could only mean one thing. The Greenpeace Arctic Pod Party!
When we first started talking about what we could do to raise money for a new Greenpeace survival pod we never imagined that a couple of months later we would be putting on a party in a club in Old Street. We very luckily had OJ join our Camden group who is the events manager at The Aquarium club in Old Street. We had our venue and it was all go from there.
But what to do? Should we have bands? Should we have comedy? After seeing the venue and the amazing pool we realised why not just have a party? A summer Arctic party! Along those lines we came up with the idea of having Santa on his summer holidays and a chill out room with Jack Frost’s cafe.
On the day we all got there in the afternoon to set up. OJ already had his team creating Santa’s igloo and icebergs on the stage which looked amazing. Thanks to Matt Wilton from Boomi decor and Phelip. Tor’s friend John Bedwell managed to paint a brilliant painting on the glass behind the pool with a polar bear of course J
Lisa , her sister Ruth and I set up in Jack Frost’s cafe with the Greenpeace information stall and all the homemade goodies we had made. Neil arrived and did a fantastic job of organising all of us volunteers so we all knew where to be when.
Santa arrived and was in costume in his igloo. Rudolph was in his antlers and ready to go. Our cute Elf was in her costume and standing to attention. The cafe was manned, the DJ was banging out the tunes and the bears were outside. We were all ready to go but where were the people?
Being a Friday night no-one turned up early! But come 9.30pm they started coming and fast forward an hour and we had a great turn out. Most people had embraced the Arctic fancy dress theme and we were surrounded by penguins, Arctic foxes, a Narwhal and even an Arctic Ram which I didn’t even know existed! People were splashing in the pool, drinking vodka with Santa and dancing with the bears. It was a great atmosphere.
Lots of people who turned up didn’t know a lot about Greenpeace which was great as now they do and know it is an amazing organisation. We also had lots of people asking questions about the survival pod. Greenpeace are building a new survival pod so that protestors on direct action have somewhere safe and warm to be when they are hanging off rigs or ships and generally not in the most hospitable of places. It means they can stay out longer even in very cold conditions which is essential for campaigns such as Save the Arctic. The only problem is they don’t come cheap and Greenpeace have been organising lots of fundraising events to raise the money. We managed to raise £1000 which is amazing! Thank you so much to everyone who came and volunteered on the night.
The only downside was that apparently people prefer drinking to eating cake in a nightclub so the team ended up eating a lot of biscuits and I am sure putting on lots of weight. But saving the Arctic is definitely worth that ;-)
Click play below to see a short video of the night, and click here to see the photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/camdengreenpeace/sets/72157634853425990/
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