All posts tagged: organisation

Impressions from Vegan Summerfest 2018, Ghent

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Vegan Summerfest 2018 is already a couple of months behind us, but I still wanted to add some photos of the event to my blog. I have documented all the previous editions (2015-2016-2017), so also did not want to have this edition missing. So here are some impressions! The edition in 2018 was the first time Vegan Summerfest was held in the EXPO in Ghent, a more spacious and accessible location. That also comes with a price, and this year was also the first time the festival was no longer free, but with an admission fee. But that also came with a spacious parking, and Expo has great connections with public transport of Ghent. We were there early, as we wanted to avoid the bigger masses that usually come in the afternoon. There was however a huge queue leading up to the entrance though. Although it was pretty dark that morning, luckily it stayed dry! Once inside there were the usual suspects: lots of stalls with food, some with clothes, and body and care products. …

Our visit to Veggieworld 2017, Brussels

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Veggieworld is an international vegan fair, that has been organised since 2011, in 8 different European countries. In October 2017, it was organised in Brussels for the first time. Veggieworld was located in Tour and Taxis. Nicely renovated old industrial buildings on the north side of Brussels. Parking just next door (a bit expensive, 7 euro, whether one was there for half an hour of half a day didn’t matter), good facilities (accessible toilets). Bright place, with high ceilings. It was unclear to us at first – going by the name – whether this was a vegan or vegetarian fair (it is vegan). We feel “Veganworld” would be a much more appropriate, clearer and better name. Veggie usually refers to vegetarianism, not veganism, so that is confusing. And using the word veggie instead of vegan makes ‘vegan’ less known and even sound more extreme (see our post: just say the word: vegan!). Admission was 8euro pp (10 euro on the day itself), which we felt was a reasonable price. Of course a free festival like …

Why I don’t buy a goat for Africa

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A couple of weeks ago I saw this message in my Facebook Feed. It is from the Belgian NGO Dierenartsen zonder Grenzen (DZG = Veterinarians without Borders). The post calls to buy a goat. At that point, the counter stood at 127 purchased goats (meanwhile more than 300). On the website koopeengeit.be (buy a goat) I find out that the collected funds are meant for the purchase of goats in Africa. “Buy a goat for 50 euro, a small herd for 200 euro or a larger herd for 500 euro and give African families a future.” On the FB page, I read that the organisation DZG “combats hunger and poverty in remote African areas, by improving husbandry“. The goats ‘give milk and manure‘ and are being eaten, because the population ‘eats a lot of goat meat’. The goats are ‘an asset that becomes profitable over time and are easily transferred into money‘ and ‘that can be a first step to cattle farming‘. For underpriviliged African families, they can be ‘a means to step out of poverty‘, it says on …

Impressions from Vegan Summerfest 2016, Ghent

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A couple of weeks ago, Belgian organisation BE Vegan organised the second edition of Vegan Summerfest. We went to the first edition in 2015 (see our post here) and surely did not want to miss it! This year, the festival was in the Artcube in Ghent, where BE Vegan had also hosted a talk by Jo-An McArthur last Winter (see blogpost here). A more spacious venue than last year, with more room inside and outside. We went early to avoid the big crowd as much as possible and to secure a parking spot nearby (by the time we left early afternoon, people were already parked several blocks away from the venue). The foodtrucks were outside and inside were two halls with stalls of organisations like Bite Back, Animal Rights, and also several shops selling shoes, books, food and cosmetics. With benches to sit down and relax a while. During the afternoon, there were some talks in yet another hall. Would have loved to hear Ruby Roth‘s ‘Vegan is Love‘ talk (via Skype), but that was scheduled for the late …

Sea Shepherd in Antwerp: a look on board the Sam Simon

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One of Sea Shepherd’s ships docked in Antwerp a couple of weeks ago. The Sam Simon anchored near Antwerp’s city museum MAS and during that couple of days crew offered guided tours on the ship. Sea Shepherd is international marine wildlife conservation organization. They use direct action tactics to protect marine life, for example disturbing whale vessels and seizure and destruction of drift nets. I visited the ship with a Dutch friend. It was fascinating! Some information that was shared during the tour: there are a lot of signposts with Japanese language on board the ship, that’s because the ship was originally a Japanese vessel new volunteers start out as sailors, cleaning, doing the simple on board tasks and can later on take on more responsibilities life on board is taken very seriously, no fooling around, and no alcohol on board. If you fool around you leave at the next harbour! The Sam Simon has participated in several operations (see the stickers) The Sam Simon is named after American television producer and writer Sam Simon (co creator of the Simpsons), who donated the money …

#58 Lovely dinner at Het Stadhuis (2), Oostburg (NL) ***

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Restaurant review #58 – Het Stadhuis is a traditional restaurant in the south of the Netherlands, in the province of Zeeland. That’s very close to the Belgian border, and very close to Bruges (only about 30km = 20 miles). Restaurant and coffeehouse Het Stadhuis is in the center of Oostburg, a small town in the south of Zeeland. Every year in the beginning of October, Het Stadhuis participates in De Vegetarische restaurantweek, a campaign of the Dutch Vegetarian Association. During this week, you can have a vegetarian dinner in the participating restaurants for only 25€. Some restaurants offer a vegan menu, or you can have the menu veganised upon request, which is the case in Het Stadhuis (preferably ask it at least one day in advance to have it veganised). We already went to Het Stadhuis in 2013, also during the ‘Vegetarische restaurantweek‘, and we liked it a lot (see our review of that visit here, it was one of the first reviews on our blog!). This was the menu for De Vegetarische restaurantweek in October 2015 (we got a …

Animal activism with photos. An evening with Jo-Anne McArthur.

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On Saturday October 17th, Belgian vegan organisation BE Vegan organised and evening with Canadian photographer Jo-Anne McArthur. In the vegan or animal rights community, Jo-Anne McArthur is well known for her work on the project We Animals, which resulted in a book with the same title. We Animals is a series of portraits of animals in the human environment: animals used for food production, clothing, experiments and companionship. We Animals is not just meant to be a series of portraits, there’s also a moral message. Taken from the We Animals website: We Animals aims to break down the barriers that humans have built which allow us to treat non-human animals as objects and not as beings with moral significance. The objective is to photograph our interactions with animals in such a way that the viewer finds new significance in these ordinary, often unnoticed situations of use, abuse and sharing of spaces. The photos are meant to make us question what is normal, and show it from the perspective of the animal. Some of her photos were also featured in the exhibit ‘Het …

Our visit to Vegan Summer fest in 50 photos! Belgium’s first vegan festival

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Yesterday BE Vegan hosted Belgium’s first* vegan festival in Gentbrugge. Ghentbrugge is near the city of Ghent, about 40km from Bruges, so it was only about a half hour drive for us. We decided to go early. Partly because the weather forecast warned for possible thunderstorms in the late afternoon. Also because the inscriptions on the FB event led to suggest there was going to be a huge turnout (more than 4000 people). So we wanted to avoid the ‘big crowd’ and we arrived a little bit before noon. The festival was mainly inside one of the halls of KERKGent. Inside the hall were stalls of organisations like Bite Back, Animal Rights and host organisation BE Vegan, and also several shops selling mainly shoes, books and food. In one shielded corner of the hall were some seatings for the scheduled talks (about vegan activism, vegan bussinesses etc). The big foodstalls were outside and next to that was a tent where the food demos took place.    Although we were there early, the queues for the main foodstalls outside were getting longer rapidly. We …

I spotted someone with this shopping bag in Brighton!

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We spent a couple of days in Brighton earlier this Summer. It’s a small but touristic town in the south east of England. We chose to go to Brighton, as we read there are so many options to eat out for vegans. And there surely are! It was great. I will be posting reviews of the restaurants we visited later! On our stroll through the city center, we spotted a lady with this shopping bag from Veganz (German vegan organisation/supermarket). Pigs are awesome Cows are cool Please don’t eat them ’cause they rule! Great! I just impulsively went up to here, told her that I loved the bag and asked if I could take a photograph. Must have been very odd that a complete stranger suddenly comes up to you to ask to photograph your bag 😉 But I thought it was very cool to spot this and see likeminded people 🙂 We had a very short chat. She had bought the bag in Berlin, but if I remember correctly she was from the UK herself. Anyway, thank you …

Vegan baking for the Vegan Challenge

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I haven’t posted many entries on The Bruges Vegan lately, because I was busy posting a series a vegan baking recipes on our other blog veggieleven.be. In April 2015, I posted a vegan baking recipe daily, to match the Vegan Challenge (a campagne of the Dutch organisation NVV). So all in all 30 recipes for pies, cookies and muffins! We’ve been vegan for quite some years now, and I’ve baked many goodies in that time, so I thought it would be a good occasion to show newbie vegans or those trying a vegan lifestyle that baking pies, cupcakes and cookies without animal ingredients is … easy as pie! 🙂 Some of the recipes were already posted on the Bruges Vegan, and some other are favourites of mine or recipes which I consider to be good introductions into the world of vegan baking. You can see the overview of all recipes in this blogentry on veggieleven.be. Here are some more pictures.       I’ll be posting some of the vegan baking recipes here too in the upcoming months!