In their own words…

'Saturday November 29h 2008 is Buy Nothing Day, It's a day where you challenge yourself to switch off from shopping and tune into life.

The rules are simple, for 24 hours you will detox from consumerism and live without shopping. Anyone can take part provided they spend a day without spending!

Buy Nothing Day is the biggest 24-hour moratorium against consumerism. People around the world will make a pact to take a break from shopping as a personal experiment or public statement and the best thing is – IT'S FREE!!!'

And on the back of Buy Nothing Day…

The 10 Commandments Of Buylessness
As Revealed To Reverend Billy:

'THOU SHALT
Forgive people, yourself and everybody else. We all shop too much.

THOU SHALT
Know your Devil. Shoppers are only dancing in the land of ten thousand ads. Consumerism is the system. Corporations are the agents of the system.

THOU SHALT
Respect the micro-gesture. Magicalize the foreground. Fore-go the plastic bag and grab that bare banana – Amen!

THOU SHALT
Practice asking for Sweat-free, Fairly-traded and Locally Made products. That's the rude that's cool.

THOU SHALT
Buy less and give more. Giving is forceful, the beginning of fantastic new economies.

THOU SHALT
Buy local and think global. Love Your Neighbor (buy at independent shops) and Love The Earth (walk to, bike to, mass transit to – the things you need.)

THOU SHALT
Citizens can buy or not buy, produce or not produce. We can change to a sustainable personal economy. Then corporations and governments will change.

THOU SHALT
Envision the history of a product on a shelf. Workers and the earth made that thing. Resisting Consumerism is an act of imagination.

THOU SHALT
Complexify. Don't be so easy to figure out. Consumers tend to regularize.
Shopping at big boxes and chains makes us all the same. Viva la difference!

THOU SHALT
Respect heroes of the resistance. A small band of neighborhood-defenders who staved off a super mall with years of protests? Beautiful.

It's our turn now. CHANGE-A-LUJAH!'

For more Reverend Billy wisdom, be sure to check out www.revbilly.com

Each year we have a photo-project or two running over the course of the Festival. One of this year's was the 'Portraiture Project', which sought to capture the Festivalgoer, in a fairly neutral environment, amongst the busy-ness of the Festival. A big thanks to Matt Burgess for making this happen.

At this year's Festival we always made sure there was a video camera on hand in case the opportunity arose to get some sneaky backstage footage. The plan paid off and as we sift through and edit hours of video, we're building a nice library of exclusive footage. Whenever we unearth something new, we'll post it here, but in the meantime, this is Foreign Slippers featuring Beth Rowley.

Foreign Slippers featuring Beth Rowley at Greenbelt 2008 from Greenbelt Festival on Vimeo.

The Festival may seem like a long time ago (or a long way away, depending on your perspective) but there is stuff coming out of the Greenbelt office all year round; from the latest gossip about the line-up, to recorded talks, books and news about regional events.

And after 35 years, we've got a bigger programme and more news than ever before, so we felt it was time to re-launch the Greenbelt blog. A handful of us from the office along with a some volunteers will blog a few times each week. So be sure to bookmark us and pop by soon!