Four years ago this week our inbox at All's Fair started to fill up with emails regretfully cancelling events. Food festivals, craft fairs, specialist markets, shopping events were all being called off as we saw what was happening all over the world and lockdown seemed inevitable for the UK.
As a result over the next 18 months we traded in person on two days - the annual Art in the Gardens event in the Botanical Gardens in Sheffield. There were no Christmas markets, no festivals and for two years no Fairtrade Fortnight events.
Of course everything moved online and we all gradually got to grips with Zoom. We sold a lot of chocolate and face masks online - sourced from fair trade artisans whose work, like ours, had dried up.
But little by little, we started to see the light shining through the clouds. Two, three, four or more vaccinations later, covid 19 for most of us is something we live with, which means a return to old fashioned fair trade campaigning events.
In 2004 the Fair Trade Towns movement, spearheaded by our good friend Bruce Crowther, was in full flow and both York and Lancaster became Fairtrade Cities during Fairtrade Fortnight that year. In the twenty years since then campaigners from both cities have done incredible work in their communities to promote the values, mission and ethics of Fairtrade. So it was fantastic to see both cities able to have a full bodied celebration with MPs Cat Smith and Rachael Maskell respectively on hand, as well as supporters from local schools, businesses, community groups as well as councillors and academics.
Joanna and Semmie with the Sheriff of York and her consort
Cat Smith MP with campaigners from Lancaster
And just as we are celebrating these groups who have been fighting for fair trade for two decades, we were equally delighted to join the newly formed Fairtrade Greater Manchester group - whose first meeting was just one year ago in the wake of the collapse of fair trade pioneers Traidcraft at their Fair Trade Fairer Future event in Rochdale.
The FIG Tree - our partner social enterprise which makes chocolate from the cocoa beans grown by our friends in New Koforidua had a stall, and we were working with Adelle A'asante of the Chocolate Has A Name project on a collaborative artwork based on photo real paintings of cocoa farmer Maame Boadua
Canvas from Ghanaian artist Patrick featuring Maame Boadua and children from a cocoa farm
There were guest speakers, fair trade stalls from four different retailers, two school choirs, Fairtrade tea and home made cakes and a Bishop on a smoothie bike - what every Fairtrade event needs.
The Mayor and Mayoress of Rochdale and the Bishop of Middleton
There will always be a place for meeting online, if only to help bring the farmers, workers and artisans closer to us, but if this marks a glorious return to in-person Fairtrade events then I can't wait for Fairtrade Fortnight 2024 which unusually is in September this year.
See you there!