Down the Road

How exciting! Following the success of our weekend at Wychwood Festival, we can now confirm our final 'tour date': 

We'll be taking the weird and wonderful world of ecology to Larmer Tree Festival!

The festival takes place from the 17th to 21st July in the Larmer Tree Gardens on the Wiltshire/Dorset border. It's a quirky, friendly and fun festival and we're really looking forward to setting up the 'Sex and Bugs and Rock 'n Roll' stall in the Global Bazaar area.The line up is pretty awesome with a little something for everyone - including Van Morrison, KT Tunstall, Lau, Richard Thompson, Treetop Fliers, Bellowhead, Seasick Steve, Imelda May... There's also a great comedy line-up with Dylan Moran and Rich Hall among many others.

Biological Radio

Saving Bugs by Blossom

From Sarah D: After a very chilly night we were welcomed by another bright day on Sunday. Our, now regular, bug hunters did us proud, turning up early with finds from around their tents. It was a particularly good day for soldier beetles! 

My highlight was a wonderful picture we received from Blossom, one of our first-time bug hunters: a stunning drawing of some mini beasts with the inspiring title on the back ‘Saving Bugs’ - thanks Blossom! 

Happy roadies, from left to right:
Hannah, Will, Sarah D., Alexe,
Helen, Em, Frazer

Our festival kit microbes had also started to grow, somewhat delayed by the coldish weather, and I was equally pleased and horrified to find out my wellies were at the top of the grossometer scale! 

I was sad to close up for the last time at 4pm for the parade - Everyone who dropped by made the Wychwood Festival outing of Sex & Bugs & Rock 'n Roll a great experience!

Our chalkboard, illustrated
by Tony De Saulles

From Em: During the day, Sunday was a bit calmer and Frazer and I took some time wandering round the festival site taking pictures of people wearing their badges or stickers and chatting to other contributors and the guys in the press tent. 

The day's excitement started when Tony de Saulles, illustrator of the 'Horrible Science' series beautified our bug-hunt chalkboard. Thanks Tony! Philip Ardagh also stopped by after his session at the literature tent and his son knew loads about being an amateur naturalist.

As we closed the stall up early, we took a mobile 'swabbing station' with us, and boy was that a great idea. We made a first trip backstage to swab festival organisers Graeme and Stefan - their surprisingly clean plates are on view here in the Microbe Hall of Shame. 

Explaining the science of
swabbing to Greg Dread

Then, thanks to Hannah's initiative, we made a second trip backstage to swab Greg Dread just before he went on stage with Dreadzone for the final (and, in my humble opinion, best) gig of the festival. We explained what we were doing to a slightly bemused Greg, who then agreed to let us swab the armpits of his jacket. Pity we didn't think to get another swab after he'd spent a good hour energetically pounding on the drums! In any case, it'll be interesting to see the comments on Dreadzone's Facebook page... and there are more photos here.

Greg Dread has been swabbed!

And so concludes our final instalment from Wychwood Festival. Thanks to everyone for making this such an amazing and memorable experience!

Ahoy!

Once we've all caught up on sleep, we'll start preparing for the next event.... watch this space!

Saturday Superhouse

Wychwood Festival Part II (and lots more photos on our photostream)

A bugs'-eye view of the #BESfest stall

Sarah D: Saturday brought more sunshine, yay! I lead an early morning bug hunt where the brilliant hunters found a crane fly larvae (with a very interesting bottom!), woodlice, centipedes, ants and more beetles. Some of our Friday hunters returned with various beasties they had found around the site, broadening our search area. These included the brightly colour soldier beetle, a click beetle and bristle tail. 

Bughunter supreme: Chloe
with her well-earned FSC cha

It was really fascinating chatting to so many people, and I learnt a lot from people dropping by the tent. I was very impressed with how knowledgeable our visitors of all ages were. Discussions ranged from how to recognise frog poo (very tricky for most people including me) to the potential factors contributing towards bee decline.

Miss Bear has been swabbed

Em: Saturday was also a pretty interesting day for investigating microbes on festival kit. Some rather unusual characters took their place on the swab throne - and I'm pleased to say that Snot the Dragon and Miss Bear were some of our more sanitary visitors (especially as they were a big hit with the kids).

Snot the Dragon in the swab
throne

'ello, 'ello, 'ello...

The highlight of the days' swabbing action was a visit by two bobbies from the Gloucestershire Constabulary and the chance to take a closer look at the microbial growth on PC562 Robertson's handcuffs and ASP baton (not every girl can say she's swabbed a policeman's truncheon ;-) 

You can see all the swabs we took during the festival in the 'Microbe Hall of Shame'.

I also managed to plan my shift so I could go and see John Otway (with Deadly the Roadie). It was a brilliantly hilarious show complete with popping shirt buttons (Bodymusic), a Bob Dylan version of 'I will survive' and a tribute to hecklers with 'House of the Rising Sun' - It's nearly rock 'n roll but I like it!

Saturday ended with 80's nostalgia (for some, anyway) as The Human League took to the main stage.

There are loads more photos now on our photostream - thanks Frazer!

Don't you want me baby?

Here comes the sun

We're back from a truly amazing weekend at Wychwood Festival, where we wowed around 1000 festival-goers with the weird and wonderful world of ecology. The Wychwood team was: Alexe, Emma, Frazer, Hannah, Helen, Sarah D. and Will - we had the whole shebang including the infamous #poogame, a live bumblebee hive (thanks to BioBest), a honeybee hive, bughunting, swabbing and mushroom sniffing!

The S&B&R&R stall at Wychwood Festival

First off, we'd like to thank Graeme, Jem and Stefan for organising such a great festival and making it all possible - we couldn't have got off to a better start! And, of course, a big thank you to the many enthusiastic visitors to our stall.

We have loads of photos from our three days on Cheltenham Racecourse, so keep checking our photostream over the next few days as we upload more. There's an album of general festival photos and a separate set of swabbing piks. Photos of the microbial cultures from people's festival kit will be appearing shortly!

There's also a lot to blog about, so we're going to do it in instalments... 

Beginnings (Wychwood Part I)

Team meeting with wellies

We set off on Thursday to overcast skies and arrived on a very soggy Cheltenham Racecourse in the mid-afternoon. It didn't take long to find our pitch and set-up the stall opposite the circus tent in the workshop area. In fact, it took longer to get our campsite established because it kept raining. 

Once we were all sorted, we trundled off to the Royal Oak in Prestbury for a team meeting and an excellent dinner.

Alexe explains the honeybee hive

We woke up to bright sunshine on Friday morning; we ran through all the activities before taking a stroll around the rest of the site to see what else was on and collect a few plants and insects to put on display. We also needed a bit of time to get used to the idea that - after many months of discussion and preparation - this was really happening! It's really something to see a crazy idea you cooked up over a few pints in the pub become reality. 

Frazer with the #poogame

The festival proper kicked off at midday on Friday and we were really busy until we closed up shop around 6pm - we had over 300 visitors on our first afternoon. 

We ended the working day with a group evaluation of the activities back at the campsite before we headed off to see Toploader and Soul II Soul. Some of the team then continued to celebrate the successful start at the headphone disco - but no-one was the worse for wear and we started the first shift bright and early on Saturday morning... (...coming soon!).

How many microbes are on my hands?

This is no rehearsal

Most of the stuff we need

The last week has been really busy but now everything's packed up and we're just waiting for the camper-van to arrive before setting off to Wychwood Festival!

Join our BioBlitz and get our
FSC campsite wildlife chart

Emma, Helen, Will, Alexe, Frazer, Hannah and Sarah D. will be there all weekend with fascinating foodwebs, beautiful bees and marvellous microbes. We'll be playing 'Whose poo" and "Magic mushrooms" and have a whole new set of displays and decorations for the stall. 

Our festival "Bioblitz" also starts tomorrow lunchtime, so we hope to see some species 'spots' from the festival site appearing on iSpot next week.

Do you know whose poo this is?

We'll be tweeting live over the weekend, so please follow us or search for #BESfest on Twitter. All being well, we'll post a blow-by-blow account on the blog on Monday - with lots of photos.

Wychwood - here we come!

Perfect Day

The tent!

We couldn't have wished for a better day to do our stall test yesterday: Lashing rain, freezing cold and a strong wind that tested our tent-erecting skills and carried the gazebo (and us) several metres across the lawn until we came to a halt in front of the fire assembly point. Apart from that, and thanks to Frazer's infinite knowledge about gazebos, the set-up went pretty smoothly.

Helen is ready to swab

Once the roof was on and the tent firmly pegged to the ground, the stall was definitely the best place to be and we had everything in place and ready to go within an hour.

Filming 'whose poo'

Sarah & Will love 'whose poo'

We had set up in front of the catering hub on the Open University's main campus, so we had a few visitors despite the weather conditions and the bank holiday weekend ahead. We spent the first 1/2 hour being bossed around by an OU filming crew and doing little bits of 'action' for the camera. The final product should be pretty interesting!

Finally, we were free to wow the trickle of visitors with a live colony of bumblebees, our selection of animal poo and Matt's hand-crafted 'swab-throne'. 

The Associate Dean turned up - claiming to be looking for the Grateful Dead on the main stage - but was very happy to let us swab him (all in the name of science communication, of course), so we'll be posting a picture of the  microbial growth on his agar plate in a couple of days.

All in all, the final shopping list of 'missing kit' is quite short and we're really pleased with how things went. Now all we need to do is find enough space to dry out the tent in time for Wychwood festival next week!

P.S. We've got lots more photos to come, so keep an eye on our new photostream.
Many thanks to Luke Beaman from the Open University's Communications Team for the great group piks!

Happy Roadies!

The Full Bug

We kicked off our day at Imperial Festival with some tentative sunshine, tucked away in the beautiful Queen’s Lawn courtyard of Imperial College London. It was Alumni Reunion day, so there were already a few eager people popping their heads into our tent by 10.30am – a bit earlier than our predicted midday kick off! 

Matt started talking about bees
...and didn't stop!

As this was our first major outing, we brought with us a whole range of games to try, as well as some interesting things to look at and smell. From the infamous 'Whose Poos?' to mushroom sniffing, there was something for everyone. We even brought a hive of live bumblebees, which drew a huge crowd, with everyone wanting to spot the queen. 

Whose poos are these?

As predicted, 'Whose poos?' was a roaring success – we asked people to match the poo to picture of animals, which proved both totally irresistible and surprisingly challenging! It turns out most people have never considered what frog droppings look like before... and lots of people weren’t shy about picking it up. 

Jules in action

Around lunchtime, it started to rain properly, and that was when people REALLY started to pour in. We were also sharing the tent with some iguanas, cockroaches, locusts, giant millipedes, at least two boas, and many more beasties, as well as a man who was making comets, so it started to get a bit crowded. Luckily for us, it dried up quite quickly! 

One of our neighbours

The best part of the day was the amazing selection of questions people asked us. Lots of people were interested in which mushrooms are edible in the UK, why they smell the way they do, and what it’s like to be a bee. My personal favourite question was when someone asked about the insect on our stickers - the ‘roadbug’ on our logo is Anthocoris nemorum – you can tell by its long body. Sarah also explained that the quickest way to tell the difference between a beetle and a bug is the to look at the shape its wings make – if it’s a T shape (like a ladybird) then it’s a beetle, but if it’s an X or a Y, it’s a bug. 

Despite taking place in the middle of London, the first two species records were uploaded onto our iSpot page - many thanks Martin!

Holly with roadbug stickers

After an absolutely fantastic day, lots of hard work from the BES Roadies and a brilliant crowd, we packed up for some well-earned rest. We spoke to over 500 people in a single day at Imperial Festival, so who knows how many people we might have met by September? Our next tour date is Wychwood Festival, so if you’re there, come and say hello!

Holly Rogers - 8 May 2013