Latest news with #EdenProject
North Wales Live
a day ago
- General
- North Wales Live
Pub chain plans to bring people together for Big Lunch campaign as research reveals increasing community disconnect
As the digital shift takes its toll on community spirit, new research has revealed that 30% of people in London feel disconnected to their community and 17% have never even spent time with their local community. However, London folk could have a unique solution…and it's served with a side of mushy peas! The research from the UK's leading pub company and brewer, Greene King, reveals that the simple joy of heading to the local pub for a fish and chips lunch could be the ultimate remedy for community disconnection. The iconic British dish has been crowned London's favourite lunch (32%) when socialising. As a response to these findings, Greene King has partnered with the Eden Project for The Big Lunch (7–8 June) — a nationwide event designed to bring neighbours and communities together to connect and build friendships. In fact, 22% of people in London revealed that the pub is one of the few places they can still truly connect with their community. Food was also hailed as the most important driver for togetherness, with a staggering 76% of people agreeing that sharing a meal is the number one reason to create more moments to socialise. With this in mind, Greene King is on a mission to bring communities around London back together one dish at a time by supporting The Big Lunch, helping people rediscover the joy of shared moments, whether it's with old friends or new faces from across the street. Entering the second year of its partnership, Greene King will be hosting events at many of its managed pubs throughout June, including community get togethers and giveaways. To find out what is going on at your local pub, visit here. Andrew Bush, Chief Experience Officer at Greene King, said: 'Our research shows that 80% of London believes that food is the most important part of a social gathering. And with 22% of people choosing to socialise in the pub, it really does show the important role that both of these things can play in bringing people together. 'However, even surrounded by huge communities it's easy to feel alone, which is why The Big Lunch is the perfect opportunity for connection - whether it's with neighbours, old friends, or someone new. "We encourage everyone to check out the website to see what's happening at their local Greene King pub and join us for great food and even better company.' Lindsey Brummitt, Programme Director at The Eden Project, said: 'This marks our second year partnering with Greene King for The Big Lunch, with their support again offering people a wonderful chance to get together, share delicious food and make new friends in our communities. "Following last year's success, which saw communities across London come together to share friendship, food and fun, we hope even more people join in The Big Lunch this year on 7 and 8 June. 'The Big Lunch is a fantastic way to reach out and make valuable social connections, especially given over a quarter of people in the UK (27%) report a sense of disconnection as Greene King's recent research has discovered.'
Wales Online
a day ago
- Business
- Wales Online
Pub chain plans to bring people together for Big Lunch campaign as research reveals increasing community disconnect
Pub chain plans to bring people together for Big Lunch campaign as research reveals increasing community disconnect The research from the UK's leading pub company and brewer, Greene King, reveals that the simple joy of heading to the local pub for a fish and chips lunch could be the ultimate remedy for community disconnection. 22% of people in London revealed that the pub is one of the few places they can still truly connect with their community. As the digital shift takes its toll on community spirit, new research has revealed that 30% of people in London feel disconnected to their community and 17% have never even spent time with their local community. However, London folk could have a unique solution…and it's served with a side of mushy peas! The research from the UK's leading pub company and brewer, Greene King, reveals that the simple joy of heading to the local pub for a fish and chips lunch could be the ultimate remedy for community disconnection. The iconic British dish has been crowned London's favourite lunch (32%) when socialising. As a response to these findings, Greene King has partnered with the Eden Project for The Big Lunch (7–8 June) — a nationwide event designed to bring neighbours and communities together to connect and build friendships. In fact, 22% of people in London revealed that the pub is one of the few places they can still truly connect with their community. Food was also hailed as the most important driver for togetherness, with a staggering 76% of people agreeing that sharing a meal is the number one reason to create more moments to socialise. With this in mind, Greene King is on a mission to bring communities around London back together one dish at a time by supporting The Big Lunch, helping people rediscover the joy of shared moments, whether it's with old friends or new faces from across the street. The simple joy of heading to the local pub for a fish and chips lunch could be the ultimate remedy for community disconnection. Entering the second year of its partnership, Greene King will be hosting events at many of its managed pubs throughout June, including community get togethers and giveaways. To find out what is going on at your local pub, visit here. Andrew Bush, Chief Experience Officer at Greene King, said: 'Our research shows that 80% of London believes that food is the most important part of a social gathering. And with 22% of people choosing to socialise in the pub, it really does show the important role that both of these things can play in bringing people together. 'However, even surrounded by huge communities it's easy to feel alone, which is why The Big Lunch is the perfect opportunity for connection - whether it's with neighbours, old friends, or someone new. "We encourage everyone to check out the website to see what's happening at their local Greene King pub and join us for great food and even better company.' Greene King will be hosting events at many of its managed pubs throughout June, including community get togethers and giveaway Lindsey Brummitt, Programme Director at The Eden Project, said: 'This marks our second year partnering with Greene King for The Big Lunch, with their support again offering people a wonderful chance to get together, share delicious food and make new friends in our communities. Article continues below "Following last year's success, which saw communities across London come together to share friendship, food and fun, we hope even more people join in The Big Lunch this year on 7 and 8 June. 'The Big Lunch is a fantastic way to reach out and make valuable social connections, especially given over a quarter of people in the UK (27%) report a sense of disconnection as Greene King's recent research has discovered.' To find out what is going on in your area, visit:
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
25 years on, the Eden Project is fighting for survival
The Icelandic poppies are popping. The cacao pods have emerged. The Japanese garden is bursting with colour. After a sunny March and a wet April, the conditions are just right for an explosive spring display at the Eden Project. But despite the flourishing scenes, the outlook isn't so rosy in the Eden Project's boardroom. A quarter of a century after opening its doors to the public, the visionary horticultural project faces its biggest challenges to date. In January 2025 the Eden Project slashed one fifth of its workforce due to declining visitor numbers and rising costs, with extreme weather patterns and ageing infrastructure bringing additional challenges for the institution. The Eden Project dream, like the global ecosystem that it champions, is more precarious than ever before. Yet the people behind it say their work has only just begun. Making science sexy The Eden Project will 'make science sexy'. That was the promise of the Eden Project's former marketing director, Paul Travers, when the first phase of the project opened 25 years ago, in May 2000. Those early visitors could visit the exhibition centre and take a tour of the former clay pit, a crater the size of 35 football pitches, where the project's famous bubbles – big enough to house the Tower of London – were beginning to spawn. 'This was the moment we realised it would be a bigger beast than we anticipated,' says Dan James, Eden Project's development director. 'The working assumption was that we'd attract around 650,000 visitors per year. In the first six months after the soft launch, half a million people turned up. It was completely beyond our expectations.' Meanwhile, exotic plant species from around the world had been selected and transported to a nursery on the estate. The scope of the project was colossal, costing £140 million in total. There was even a nationwide scaffolding shortage, because 230 miles of the stuff (a Guinness world record) was being used to build the Eden Project's biomes. Just four months after its Mediterranean and tropical biomes and gardens opened to the public, in March 2001, more than 800,000 visitors had passed through its doors. The Eden Project was such a success that its bosses placed adverts in West Country newspapers urging people to stay away. 'I think there was a general consensus at the time that Eden might have been one of the millennium projects most likely to fail, but I think the opposite is true,' says James. The Eden Project quickly became a symbol of Cornwall's prospering tourism industry. It has hosted some of the world's biggest musicians: Elton John, the Beach Boys, Amy Winehouse and Oasis have all played their anthemic hits to the backdrop of brightly lit domes. It marked its territory in popular culture, too. Halle Berry abseiled down one of the biomes in the 2002 Bond film Die Another Day. Ten years after opening, the Eden Project had attracted more than a million visitors per year, far exceeding all expectations and regularly ranking in the top 20 in the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) list. 'It was completely beyond our expectations,' says James. The project, nobody could deny, was proving to be a roaring success. The fall of Eden? The first cracks began to show in 2012, when the Eden Project trust revealed a deficit of £6.3 million for the year, compared to a surplus of £136,000 the previous year. They put the struggles down to poor weather, the economic downturn and the London 2012 Olympics. That year, the Eden Project reported less than a million visitors for the first time and was forced to make job cuts as a result. Malcolm Bell, the former boss at Visit Cornwall, said at the time that he wasn't surprised: 'Repeat and return business is harder for Cornwall than the likes of London. What is a 'must do' the first time, becomes a 'maybe' the second time,' he said. By 2024, the Eden Project had dropped to number 54 in the ALVA list of top tourist attractions. It reported 673,625 visits, fewer than Clumber Park in the East Midlands, with a year-on-year footfall drop of 6 per cent. That number is almost a third of the 1.8 million visitors who passed through its doors during its first year of operation. While nobody expected the project to maintain the feverish levels of interest of its early days, that still represents a drop of 66 per cent. Why so? James says that, like many tourism businesses, the Eden Project suffered greatly during the pandemic and hasn't fully recovered since. 'When visitors aren't coming to Cornwall, that's a challenge. We saw a bit of that last year. We've also got some unique challenges because of our site: we're in a hole in the ground, and that costs a lot of money to maintain,' he said, adding that worsening floods and storms have affected the site, which sits beneath the water table. With visitor numbers down so dramatically, eyes naturally turn to the price point. An adult ticket on the door is £42 and a child aged between five and 16 costs £16. For a family of four, this means a family ticket costs £116 (booked online in advance: £100). 'It's always a conversation we have at board meetings, almost on a weekly basis. When you pay to come in, that's your annual pass, meaning you can come in as many times as you want for the rest of the year. There are also discounts for locals and for people on universal credit,' says James. 'The real challenge is to keep people wanting to come back, and making Eden not just a bucket list destination but a place where you want to come on a regular basis to see how it's changing and what's going on.' As for the state of the domes, James says: 'The biomes may be 25 years old, but they still look amazing. There are bits that are fraying around the edges. Generally, it's in good nick.' Nobody can accuse the Eden Project bosses of sitting on their hands. Two years ago the project drilled three miles underground and built a geothermal energy plant which now heats its biomes, along with thousands of homes near Truro, local schools and the Royal Cornwall Hospital. The site has also moved with the times in terms of its wider offering. Over the years, new play areas, restaurants, a canopy walkway, a giant swing, a seasonal ice rink and even a zip wire have added a slice of fun to the visitor experience. What's next? The Eden Project has set its sights on growth beyond the south Cornish coast. The Eden Project North, in Morecambe, is expected to open in 2028 and there are plans in the pipeline for outposts in Dundee and Northern Ireland. Farther afield, the Eden Project has a centre in development in Qingdao, China, and proposals for an Eden Project Australia in a former coal mile in Anglesea, Victoria. 'Eden's mission, inspiring positive action for the planet, is more important now than it's ever been,' says James. 'But if we want to have a national role, we need to be more than just delivering our educational work in the bottom left-hand corner of the UK. We need a bigger reach and a bigger audience. 'The best is yet to come for Eden.'
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
25 years on, the Eden Project is fighting for survival
The Icelandic poppies are popping. The cacao pods have emerged. The Japanese garden is bursting with colour. After a sunny March and a wet April, the conditions are just right for an explosive spring display at the Eden Project. But despite the flourishing scenes, the outlook isn't so rosy in the Eden Project's boardroom. A quarter of a century after opening its doors to the public, the visionary horticultural project faces its biggest challenges to date. In January 2025 the Eden Project slashed one fifth of its workforce due to declining visitor numbers and rising costs, with extreme weather patterns and ageing infrastructure bringing additional challenges for the institution. The Eden Project dream, like the global ecosystem that it champions, is more precarious than ever before. Yet the people behind it say their work has only just begun. The Eden Project will 'make science sexy'. That was the promise of the Eden Project's former marketing director, Paul Travers, when the first phase of the project opened 25 years ago, in May 2000. Those early visitors could visit the exhibition centre and take a tour of the former clay pit, a crater the size of 35 football pitches, where the project's famous bubbles – big enough to house the Tower of London – were beginning to spawn. 'This was the moment we realised it would be a bigger beast than we anticipated,' says Dan James, Eden Project's development director. 'The working assumption was that we'd attract around 650,000 visitors per year. In the first six months after the soft launch, half a million people turned up. It was completely beyond our expectations.' Meanwhile, exotic plant species from around the world had been selected and transported to a nursery on the estate. The scope of the project was colossal, costing £140 million in total. There was even a nationwide scaffolding shortage, because 230 miles of the stuff (a Guinness world record) was being used to build the Eden Project's biomes. Just four months after its Mediterranean and tropical biomes and gardens opened to the public, in March 2001, more than 800,000 visitors had passed through its doors. The Eden Project was such a success that its bosses placed adverts in West Country newspapers urging people to stay away. 'I think there was a general consensus at the time that Eden might have been one of the millennium projects most likely to fail, but I think the opposite is true,' says James. The Eden Project quickly became a symbol of Cornwall's prospering tourism industry. It has hosted some of the world's biggest musicians: Elton John, the Beach Boys, Amy Winehouse and Oasis have all played their anthemic hits to the backdrop of brightly lit domes. It marked its territory in popular culture, too. Halle Berry abseiled down one of the biomes in the 2002 Bond film Die Another Day. Ten years after opening, the Eden Project had attracted more than a million visitors per year, far exceeding all expectations and regularly ranking in the top 20 in the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) list. 'It was completely beyond our expectations,' says James. The project, nobody could deny, was proving to be a roaring success. The first cracks began to show in 2012, when the Eden Project trust revealed a deficit of £6.3 million for the year, compared to a surplus of £136,000 the previous year. They put the struggles down to poor weather, the economic downturn and the London 2012 Olympics. That year, the Eden Project reported less than a million visitors for the first time and was forced to make job cuts as a result. Malcolm Bell, the former boss at Visit Cornwall, said at the time that he wasn't surprised: 'Repeat and return business is harder for Cornwall than the likes of London. What is a 'must do' the first time, becomes a 'maybe' the second time,' he said. By 2024, the Eden Project had dropped to number 54 in the ALVA list of top tourist attractions. It reported 673,625 visits, fewer than Clumber Park in the East Midlands, with a year-on-year footfall drop of 6 per cent. That number is almost a third of the 1.8 million visitors who passed through its doors during its first year of operation. While nobody expected the project to maintain the feverish levels of interest of its early days, that still represents a drop of 66 per cent. Why so? James says that, like many tourism businesses, the Eden Project suffered greatly during the pandemic and hasn't fully recovered since. 'When visitors aren't coming to Cornwall, that's a challenge. We saw a bit of that last year. We've also got some unique challenges because of our site: we're in a hole in the ground, and that costs a lot of money to maintain,' he said, adding that worsening floods and storms have affected the site, which sits beneath the water table. With visitor numbers down so dramatically, eyes naturally turn to the price point. An adult ticket on the door is £42 and a child aged between five and 16 costs £16. For a family of four, this means a family ticket costs £116 (booked online in advance: £100). 'It's always a conversation we have at board meetings, almost on a weekly basis. When you pay to come in, that's your annual pass, meaning you can come in as many times as you want for the rest of the year. There are also discounts for locals and for people on universal credit,' says James. 'The real challenge is to keep people wanting to come back, and making Eden not just a bucket list destination but a place where you want to come on a regular basis to see how it's changing and what's going on.' As for the state of the domes, James says: 'The biomes may be 25 years old, but they still look amazing. There are bits that are fraying around the edges. Generally, it's in good nick.' Nobody can accuse the Eden Project bosses of sitting on their hands. Two years ago the project drilled three miles underground and built a geothermal energy plant which now heats its biomes, along with thousands of homes near Truro, local schools and the Royal Cornwall Hospital. The site has also moved with the times in terms of its wider offering. Over the years, new play areas, restaurants, a canopy walkway, a giant swing, a seasonal ice rink and even a zip wire have added a slice of fun to the visitor experience. What's next? The Eden Project has set its sights on growth beyond the south Cornish coast. The Eden Project North, in Morecambe, is expected to open in 2028 and there are plans in the pipeline for outposts in Dundee and Northern Ireland. Farther afield, the Eden Project has a centre in development in Qingdao, China, and proposals for an Eden Project Australia in a former coal mile in Anglesea, Victoria. 'Eden's mission, inspiring positive action for the planet, is more important now than it's ever been,' says James. 'But if we want to have a national role, we need to be more than just delivering our educational work in the bottom left-hand corner of the UK. We need a bigger reach and a bigger audience. 'The best is yet to come for Eden.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Metro
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Metro
Here's what Donald Trump's £130,000,000,000 'Golden Dome' reminds us of
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Cartoonish, Star Wars, The Simpsons and Harry Potter – this is what Donald Trump's £130 billion 'Golden Dome' plan looks like. The US President plans to splash out £130 billion on a 'Golden Dome' defence system that looks like something out of a Stephen King novel. He is keen to spend the equivalent of Ukraine's GDP on the missile defence shield to fend off attacks from US enemies like Russia and China. Trump unveiled the dome plan in a bizarre press conference in the Oval Office yesterday, flanked by a cartoonish cardboard version of the proposed system. The plan is to launch US weapons into space for the first time to neutralise missiles. Despite the serious implications of the Golden Dome, its design has raised some eyebrows. People told Metro it reminds them of The Simpsons when a huge dome appears over Springfield after it becomes too polluted. The dome in The Simpsons Movie is lowered by an army of helicopters, while the Trump defence system will utilise more hardcore weapons set to be built in Alaska, Florida, Georgia and Indiana. While Trump's system won't be a physical structure placed above the entire US, the drawing resembles the menacing dome trapping a town and its inhabitants in Stephen King's 'Under the Dome' 2009 novel. King's dome is also invisible, cutting people off from the outside world. It is also deadly, killing one person instantly when they venture too close to the shield. People joked that the Golden Dome looks like a scene out of Star Wars 'The Phantom Menace,' which is not that far-fetched. Trump is not the first US president who has dreamt of a missile defence system – Ronald Reagan famously announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) during the Cold War, nicknamed the Star Wars program. Just like adopting the MAGA slogan from Reagan word by word, Trump appears to have been inspired by his predecessor's Star Wars plan. Some said it looks like a highlighter cap used at hairdressers', a contact lens, the dining pods that sprang up on UK streets during the coronavirus, or the Eden Project – basically anything spherical. The shape is the only thing the Golden Dome and the Eden Project have in common. Whereas the missile system is designed to destroy, the Eden Project in Cornwall houses thousands of plants collected from different climates and environments worldwide for people to admire. It hosts the Eden Sessions live outdoor festival every summer with a star-studded line up. It is hard to unsee how much the Golden Dome resembles the protective shield Hogwarts' professors spell around the school in Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2. POTUS said: 'Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space,' he said. 'And we will have the best system ever built.' Trump's Golden Dome is inspired by Israel's Iron Dome land defence system, which shoots down rockets aimed at Israel. It was activated when tensions flared between the armed group Hezbollah and Israel last summer. Trump's ambition is to have the system up and running before the end of his term in 2029. While the dome might seem megalomaniac to anyone in the UK, Trump's administration is pushing ahead with it full steam. More Trending An initial $25 billion has been set aside by the US Congress in next year's budget for the project. Its progress will be overseen by General Michael the US Space Force's vice chief of space operations. And unsurprisingly, Trump took full credit for the project. He told reporters he had suggested the new comprehensive missile system to US military chiefs rather than the other way around. Elon Musk's SpaceX, Palantir and Anduril have emerged as the top choices to build the key components for the dome system. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Putin shows no sign of agreeing to ceasefire with rare visit to the frontline MORE: Major crypto platform hit by '$400m' cyber attack with customers issued danger warning MORE: Trump's favorite food and desserts revealed on Take Your Child to Work Day
