Autumn Confest 2025
Conference-style discussion, music & dance
Saturday, October 4th, 2025
2pm - 11pm
Everyone has the right to nutrient dense, soul nourishing food, that doesn’t cost the earth. But what does this actually involve?
How do we support our local growers while ensuring everyone has access to affordable food?
How do we stop our needs in the present from impacting food security for future generations?
These are all questions we will discuss at the Confest, bringing together farmers, horticulturalists, academics and activists to ask:
What is food security, and why does it matter?
Join us in exploring how our local food system can nourish both people and place.
We're bringing together growers and producers with local people to share practical insights, tackle challenges, and celebrate successes. Our local food network does more than put meals on tables - it cultivates biodiverse landscapes, strengthens community resilience, and creates economic opportunities that benefit everyone.
Whether you're already growing or producing food in the area, or simply curious about how local food systems work, you'll find valuable connections here. Come discover how neighboring farms are innovating and explore ways we can support each other's efforts.
This gathering is about building the relationships that make our food system - and our community - stronger. Together, we can create a future where good food, healthy land, and thriving neighborhoods go hand in hand.
What’s happening at the event
Forum Discussion
This forum asks the question “What is local food security and why is it important”. The forum will be facilitated by John Bray, an experienced teacher, facilitator and public speaker from Sheffield. John’s passion is supporting communities to connect with nature and have access to locally grown food.
The forum is designed to be a dynamic and engaging conversation that helps foster open dialogue and perspectives, examining the challenges and opportunities within our food system here in North Wales.
Inspiring Speakers
Nathan Richards explores pathways to local, sustainable food systems and what it takes for communities to work together.
Steve Niner shares insights on cultivating right relationship with place and land.
Nicola Peel examines chocolate's role in our lives and how agroforestry might support it’s sustainable production.
Music & Dance
The evening will be a night of celebration under the Harvest Moon.
We are excited to announce an all-star lineup including exquisite folk acoustic sounds from Freya & Roseanna. We also welcome back Martin Daws and Jodie Melodie who will have your feet tapping and your hips swinging with their upbeat, openhearted rhythms and rhymes.
The night ends with a blast, featuring Voodoo Skank playing some soul-shaking reggae and funk.
Keynote Speaker: Nathan Richards
Working Together Towards Local, Sustainable Food Systems. 2.15pm
Nathan Richards and his wife, Alicia Miller, co-own Troed y Rhiw Organics, a Soil Association certified organic farm committed to working with nature. They produce diverse vegetables, herbs, fruit, and flowers through local box schemes and producer's markets. The mixed farm includes traditional Hereford cattle, occasional pigs, and chickens. Their sustainable farming ethos encompasses soil microbiology, habitat protection, and community connection. By serving their immediate community locally, via veg boxes and local farmers markets, they ensure food freshness—often picked and sold the same day.
Nathan describes himself as a “Wild dream realiser, optimist, careful planner, fixer of tractors and machines, problem solver, creative thinker, loud whistler and floral shirt wearer.”
We are very excited to host Nathan at this event - he is a renowned leader in the field (pun intended!) and an engaging public speaker - this is an opportunity not to be missed!
Keynote Speaker: Steve Niner
Healing with the Tools of Magic 5pm
Join Steve Niner for an inspiring talk on how the tools of the magician, shaman, and witch can help us repair our fractured relationship with the living world. These tools have been used across cultures for as long as we have walked this earth, rooted in an animist worldview — one that sees everything as alive and imbued with spirit.
Modern Western culture is almost unique in denying this reality, and the consequences of that denial are all around us. From this perspective in order for humanity to survive and thrive, we must humbly acknowledge that we are not the only intelligences sharing this world.
The tools of magic offer a way to communicate with these other intelligences, inviting inspiration and guidance to set us on a path toward reconnection, resilience, and a future where humans and nature flourish together.
Tickets
*Under 16 - KIDS GO FREE
Early Bird- £8 (sold out!)
General - £12
Contributor £20
Evening only £5
