Well, I'm delighted to announce that we have our first confirmed Big Green Bus booking for 2009!!!! By spring next year, I expect booking confirmations will be coming in thick and fast, but this one's very exciting because it's the first!

Worcestershire County Council have agreed to fund the bus for a three day eco-festival at Bishops Wood Centre in Stourport-on-Severn. The event will run in a similar way to the one we attended at Bradford on Avon this October; the first two days will be for schools and on the third day the centre will host a Big Green Eco-Festival for all comers! The dates are 2nd, 3rd and 4th July, so if you live anywhere in the West Midlands, please put the 4th July 2009 in your diary and come along to see us! (You can have a look at the centre by clicking on this link http://worcestershire.whub.org.uk/home/wcc-edu-bishops-wood.htm.)

Also, for those of you living on the South Coast, I hope I'm not tempting fate by saying that The Big Green Bus will be in the Bournemouth/Poole area from around 15th to 24th May 2009. I have been talking with Bournemouth and Poole Borough Councils, who are in the process of planning an amazing series of green events during May and we hope that the bus will be a major part of the initiative. This series of events will commence with me doing a talk for The Dorset Humanists on Friday 15th May. I'll write more about this when I have confirmation.

We have been inundated with enquiries for bookings for 2009 and are in the process of putting together a tour plan to make sure we cover the events we attend in the most sustainable way possible. I am looking for sponsors to help fund the bus so that it can attend as many events as possible, from small primary school ‘green days' to giant 3-day county shows. We'll have more details about the kind of sponsorship we're looking for on the website in the New Year.

I think councils often get a hard time for not doing enough, but I have to say that in my dealings with Worcestershire, Bournemouth and Poole, I have been bowled over by the dedicated and passionate attitude of individuals working to promote sustainability within the councils. The individuals I have met are absolutely determined to do everything they can to get the green message across to businesses and residents in their towns and counties... so there's hope for us yet!