Welcome to all speakers at the second symposium!

I hope your summer is going well. Here in the Southwest UK we are
enduring one of the hottest and driest summers in record and I know many of you
are in the same situation.

In these conditions, the value of perennial crops and food forest systems
becomes even more obvious. Whilst crops may not be totally unaffected, at least
there are still crops to be harvested. As the climate emergency gets worse, the
failure of annual crops is only likely to intensify.

Reminder about the presentations

Your video presentations are due to be sent to us at the latest by the end of October. All presentations at the symposium will be pre-recorded, but Q & A sessions will be live.

Presentations can be videos (mp4 format preferred) or video versions of powerpoint presentations. If you have technical issues making these then do get in touch and we can help. There was also more technical info already sent to you as an attachment in June.

Martin Crawford, Director

Event now extended to 5 days!
We’re very please to announce that the symposium will now extend over 5 days from 11.00am on 20th February to evening on 24 February. You get the extra day absolutely free!

Evening sessions
As at the first event, there will be informal evening sessions for those who want to participate. One evening will be a film showing. The other evenings there will be a new and much improved version of “The Walnut Tree” bar where you can chat in small groups on any topics, move to diffrerent tables and mingle (we’re excited about this new feature!)

Martin Crawford, Symposium Director

It’s getting busy here as we continue to put together a great week’s worth of interesting material for February. The timetable/agenda is undergoing a few changes as new speakers are confirmed and the latest version can be viewed here:
Agenda / timetable

We’re fortunate to have several great authors of forest garden related books and publications speaking including:

Anna Locke                            Anne Stobart             

Alan Carter                             Dani Baker             

Mark Biffin                            Martin Crawford   

Stephen Barstow          

The walnut tree bar

On several evenings the walnut tree virtual bar will be running (bring your own refreshments!). This years bar is a great improvement on the last one and will be a space where you can virtually move between tables and topics. 

Final preparations are being made to launch the symposium on 20th
February.  We’re very excited to announce that the film scheduled on 22nd
will be a new full length film on food forests by Thomas Regnault (maker of the
3-minute National Geographic video) which is literally being finished as I type
this.

Next week look out for emails from us (on this same email address):

• Weds 15 Feb for presenters – access to symposium website enabled – joining instructions
• Fri 17 Feb for all – access to symposium website enabled – joining instructions

Further reminder emails about how to access symposium website will follow on Mon 20th Feb, and these will come from Dynamic Events.

The final agenda/timetable is on the ART website here

I’m looking forward to meeting you all very soon!

Best regards
Martin Crawford, Symposium Director