VegfestUK completed 4 events in 2023 attracting around 14,000 visitors, many of whom were not vegan before attending the event. Feedback forms indicate that as many as 4,000 plus individuals have pledged to make significant changes to their lifestyles and diets after visiting Vegfest, with around 500 pledging to go vegan. This includes the recent VegfestUK London held at Olympia last year in November, where around 900 people pledged to make changes are visiting the event.

Before Covid, and with the benefit of the excellent conference facilities at Olympia, VegfestUK London had grown into a strong focus on movement issues and movement building, and as such was attracting very vegan crowd with less emphasis on outreach and more emphasis on vegan issues. Post covid there has been a deliberate shift to focus more on outreach and the year’s figures demonstrate this. Partly due to dedicated areas for introductions to plant based lifestyles, hosted by Vanessa Sturman, but also in part due to making tickets freely available to NHS & 3rd Sector workers, as well as local councillors, and as a result we’ve seen as much as a 3rd of our overall visitors yet to be vegan, and over 80% of them committing to change after the show.

With the impending climate crises its essential to help people transition to plant-based lifestyles as quickly as possible and in as big a number as possible, and our shows help play their part with this. In part because of the existing efforts of so many activists – it seems people go vegan or increase plant-based options at the show because it brings together many different strands of veganism and plant-based lifestyles that the visitor may already have experienced. Vegfest is undoubtedly focused on outreach as well as movement building, a role it has provided for some years now.’

Spend at the London show as healthy with an average of around £65 being spent by each visitor, with some reporting several hundred pounds spent at the show. This is considerably higher that Bristol (average £35 each visitor) and provides useful information into planning for 2024. And over 80% of visitors expressed an interest in returning to the show in 2024, with the same figure of 80% of the non-vegan visitors finding the show a positive representation of veganism.

In addition, there’s some very useful data emerging showing that vegans tend to stay vegan after taking that step, with around 90% saying they have stayed vegan after going vegan. This has been consistent across our Brighton, Bristol & London shows and although it’s based only on feedback from visitors at the shows, & not an academic study, nevertheless the sample size of around 850 and the same questions asked in multiple choice options have given us some useful insights into behaviour change and understanding of veganism amongst our visitors, and something we’ll be building on for 2024 and beyond.

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