Carbon Neutral Hinckley Festival

To celebrate achieving Carbon Neutral Hinckley and Earth Day 2030, a week-long festival of earth-friendly activities in and around Hinckley.

All travel on Hinckley BioBuses will be free for the duration of the festival.

• Wild extravaganza at Crescent Gardens.
  Five years after the bulldozers moved in, follow the inspiring story of how the area has been rewilded to become an award-winning community garden and urban nature reserve.
  
  
• Hinckley Cycle Circle
  An all-day event for all, featuring a non-stop circuit of the Hinckley Cycle Orbital Route, for bikes, ebikes and epods. With entertainment and refreshments, and prizes for themed entries.
  
  
• Well Dressing Challenge
  Community groups and schools around the Hinckley area will decorate water refill points, with prizes in five categories.
  
  
• Time Travel Experience
  A week-long exhibition showing the history of carbon-neutral transport over the past ten years, including virtual reality experiences of the signts, sounds and smells of internal combustion engined vehicles, hands-on experience of driving early electric vehicles, and demonstrations of the latest bio-powered vehicles.
  
  
• Heroes of the Revolution
  Visit the green plaques around Hinckley in hop-on/hop-off epods for an interactive tour of the important places where the transition to a carbon-neutral Hinckley started and the people who started it, with virtual reality interviews and oral history accounts.
  
  
• Hot Air Balloon rides
  Take to the sky in a carbon-neutral SolarFlame™️ powered hot air balloon for a birds-eye view of the area (weather permitting).
  
  
• Starry Starry Night
  In the past few years local astronomers have benefitted from reduced light pollution in the area thanks to the new design of LED street lighting and DeadLight™️ low-reflection road surfaces. On the night of Earth Day, Monday 22 April, the lights will go out in many Hinckley buildings for one hour to provide an even better view of the night sky, and there will be guided observation sessions in the Crescent Gardens observation platform.
  
  
• Hinckley Arboretum Days
  Every day during the festival Hinckley Arboretum will run guided tours to explore the variety of trees, their role in storing carbon, and the biodiversity they support. The tour will include models and artist's impressions of the Rail Freight Terminal which was planned for the site before local opposition stopped it.
  
  
• Carbon-Neutral Gardening
  There will be demonstrations around the area with tips on carbon-neutral gardening: peat-free, no-dig, home-composting, community propagation and other ways for us all to keep Hinckley carbon neutral.
  
  
• Permaculture for the future
  During the festival Hinckley will host a symposium of planning professionals from around the UK to explore ways to continue the carbon-neutral revolution and save the world.