Rewilding Rave

  • Robin Howie

Rewilding Raves is our fourth project for the Climate Emergency Department of London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. This time they challenged us with ‘how might we celebrate and foster more nature and biodiversity in our private and shared places?’. Our approach was driven by the influx of younger generations finding joy in gardening throughout the pandemic and ‘Turn up the Volume’ — a recent research study that discovered music fans are much more likely to make climate based lifestyle changes than non-music fans. We wanted to avoid the typical doom laden messaging around the climate emergency and instead encourage people to feel great about participating in their neighbourhoods becoming greener and wilder places to live and work… we set out to invite the entire borough to become Wild Hedonists. Rewilding Raves launched in Summer 2022 as a platform for LBHF’s council to communicate all activity around ecology and gardening projects.

At first sight the Rewilding Rave campaign appears to be for a music festival or club night… the campaign invites the borough to make pool parties for dragonflies and frogs and wildflower habitats where butterflies and bees can lose their inhibitions. This campaign stretched the length and breadth of the Borough.
All campaign activity led to a council webpage which has practical tips on how to get involved whether that’s holding your own Wild Houseparty at home, a Wild Streetparty with your neighbours or a Wild Office Party at work.
Alongside the print campaign we planted over a 100 picket signs (that doubled as bee hotels) across the boroughs public parks and green spaces. These little interventions drew attention to small habitat details and encouraged bypassers to make little changes at home to support various species that could do with a little leg up across the borough.

We also ran Instagram ads further targeting hyperlocal areas based on specific areas ecological needs and opportunities… For example, the borough doesn’t have enough naturally occurring wet spaces. However, the ponds it does have are really thriving, so to create more of a network of wet spaces we triangulated the main ponds and targeted nearby garden owners encouraging them to add a mini pool party for frogs, dragonflies and newts. Other hyperlocal ads targeted both homes with and without gardens creating ways for everyone to get involved.