From foraging to balsam bashing, and from veg growing to thermal imaging, it’s been a bumper year for PACT.

At our AGM event in Penrith on 16 September 2025, PACT chair Christine Sutherland gave attendees a whistlestop tour of our many events and initiatives.

Christine also appealed for more volunteers to help run the activities planned for the year ahead, and to join the board of directors. PACT really does need more people to come forward if we’re going to be able to continue. 

Here’s Christine’s action-packed report.

Review of the past year – AGM 2025

PACT only has a small team of directors and I find it quite amazing when I look through the year to see the number of different events and projects that we have been involved in.

Many of the groups set up under the PACT umbrella are now pretty much autonomous but PACT still takes an interest, providing volunteers or banking services or promoting their events. Other events and talks are run directly by PACT.

New website

We have a new website, which has been a long time in gestation, but hopefully you will see it soon! [Update: You’re now looking at it 🙂 ]

It was designed by Jili Allen Creative and is currently being populated by Jaki Bell. This arranges our work and interests into five themes so I will use these this time to tell you about what we have been doing.

These are:

• Local Food and Drink Initiatives
• Protect and Enjoy Nature
• Travel Sustainably in Eden
• Improve Buildings and Save Energy
• Reduce, Reuse and Repair.

We hope you will like the new website once we get it live and hope that you will use it to find information about past and future PACT events and projects.

It has been designed to be as sustainable as possible. For example, the images are all black and white, which uses less energy to display on your screen.

Local food and drink initiatives

Foraging

A new event this year under the food heading was a foraging walk in June, led by Abbi Lawson of Home Grown Here and Bake Off fame. She took us on a rather wet walk around Askham and we were fascinated by what she showed us and told us about the plants that we found. We ate a foraged salad with our picnic lunches and drank drinks that Abbi had made from foraged ingredients. We hope to run this again next year.

Protect and enjoy nature

Trees

A popular event last autumn run in conjunction with the Eden Rivers Trust was Trees from Seeds, a tree seed planting day.

Members went to Thacka Beck nature reserve to collect tree seeds and then back to Eden Rivers Trust’s tree nursery to learn how to plant them up.

Curlews

In May we had a fascinating and extremely well-attended talk from Jaki Bell work being done locally and nationally to protect and support Curlews.

Balsam

In August there was a lively joint PACT and Eden Rivers Trust Balsam Bash at Great Salkeld. We plan to adopt a patch in Stainton as a PACT project for future years.

Partners

PACT directors have had regular meetings with Eden Rivers Trust, with National Trust staff at Acorn Bank and with Ami Stidolph of Cumbria Wildlife Trust to discuss projects which we could collaborate on. There have been a number of discussions about a possible community orchard.

Events combining food and biodiversity

Community gardening

One initiative that combines food-growing and improving biodiversity is of course the long-established Penrith Community Gardeners. This group continues to meet weekly and to improve the look of Penrith while growing food for people to pick and plants for pollinators.

Excess food is left outside the Salvation Army for people to help themselves and they also have a very successful seed and plant stall at Penrith station.

Seeds

Our annual Seedy Saturday in March at Penrith Methodist Church has become a regular event in the PACT calendar. The event combines a programme of gardening-related talks with an array of stalls from different local organisations, a seed swap, a gardening Freegle and tool sharpening. And of course refreshments!

This year’s lectures covered Perennial Veg, Wilder Ponds, Planting for Pollinators and a
Gardeners’ Question Time.

Plans are already under way for the next Seedy Saturday on 28th March 2026. Please save some seeds for us if you can!

Seedlings

Seedy Saturday is now followed by Seedling Saturday, this year held on 31 May, to give people the opportunity to swap seedlings rather than seeds. This is held alongside the Parish of Penrith Plant Sale and this year was held inside St Andrews Church because the weather forecast was poor. We enjoyed chatting to customers and swapping plants and again we felt that the two events worked well together.

Travel sustainably in Eden

Electric vehicles

PACT continues to be actively involved in the EVs Made Easy initiative led by Futureproof Cumbria (formerly Cumbria Action for Sustainability). PACT had helped to deliver the inaugural event last year.

PACT director Richard Waller is looking to develop a training course for those keen to make the transition to an electric vehicle and would be very happy to hear from anyone who might be interested in getting involved – either as a contributor or a participant.

We looked into setting up an eco car club for Penrith, but felt that it would need too much commitment for our small team of directors.

Cycling

We hope to get going this winter on a project about cycling, focusing initially on cycling infrastructure within Penrith, to help people get around town and to get to school.

Improve buildings and save energy

Thermal imaging

Our latest project in conjunction with Futureproof Cumbria uses thermal imaging. We have recruited a number of volunteers who will undertake training and then go to people’s houses, in pairs, to take photos with a thermal imaging camera.

Futureproof Cumbria have already been doing this for two years with groups based in different towns across Cumbria.

The photos show up where improvements in insulation could be used or other improvements could be made. These have led to people making useful improvements to their houses and accessing grants.

Reduce, reuse and repair

Repair Café

The wonderful Penrith Repair Café was started by PACT but is pretty much independent now – though PACT members continue to help.

It continues to thrive and to attract new repairers and to provide a place for PACT members and others to meet and chat over refreshments.

Freegle

PACT also supports Freegle and helps with the annual Give & Take Day in Shap in November. We try to promote the online Freegle as the best way for people to find new homes for unwanted items.

Clothing

Another project that PACT is happy to support is Gail’s Cumbria Clothing Collective.

Set up in response to pictures of waste clothing in the Atacama desert, they try to inform the public, encouraging them to buy less clothing and to throw less away.

We support the proposal that a new clothing group might set up regular sessions to help people to mend and alter their clothes.

Climate change awareness

Talks

This year, we have had a number of fascinating but scary talks raising awareness of climate change and the issues connected with it. The first was a year ago when Simon Carr spoke at our AGM on Climate Change and the Landscape of Cumbria.

This was followed in November by Rich Waller’s talk on Glaciers and Tipping Points and then in the spring Joe Human spoke on the Health Hazards of Climate Change.

Films

PACT has continued to support the Green Screen initiative at Penrith Alhambra cinema, which shows a wide variety of relevant films. This year we have also supported the Youth Green Screen project, which got young people involved with the films and with a fantastic performance in September.

Books

We have also supported Gail to run the Environmental Reading Group at the library and are delighted to hear that this is thriving.

Forthcoming events

Our next talk is on Friday 31st October at the Quaker Meeting House.

Joe Human will talk about how climate change is affecting coffee growing and Susan Beale will talk about Fair Trade and will bring some exhibits or produce to sell from the Fair Trade shop in Caldbeck.

We hope that people who are interested in Fair Trade will come together and discuss whether they might restart the Penrith Fair Trade group.

On Friday 14th November, also at the Quaker Meeting House, Scott Jackson is going to talk to us about Another Weigh and the benefits of doing our shopping there!

Later in the winter and spring we hope to have talks about badger vaccination in Cumbria and about pesticides, among other topics.

Maybe an event with the Bicycle Mayor of Cumbria to get us inspired.

The team – help needed

The PACT Board of Directors is a small band of keen volunteers, but we would love to have some more if anyone would like to consider joining us.

We now have at least 115 members but only 5 directors so the team really needs some help.

Please let us know what you can do for PACT or seriously we will not be able to continue!

Our secretary Anne-Marie needs to step back from being secretary, though will continue as a director with a particular interest in biodiversity.

We really need a secretary so hope you might consider helping us out in this way.

We are grateful to Neil Barrett for acting as our treasurer for the last two AGMs, but he is now having to step down from the role. Again, this role is essential for the continuation of the organisation, so please let us know if you have these skills and could take this on.

The directors have been supported for several years by Kate Clements, our part-time Community Action Officer, who was funded by the Zero Carbon Cumbria project. She left us earlier this year and we are currently advertising for a replacement.

The Zero Carbon Cumbria project is due to finish at the end of December but we have permission to spend the money we have in hand up until the end of next June.

Another area where we could use some new input is with the organising of events. Three of us form the Events Group, which meets monthly on Zoom, and it would be great to have more people involved with this.

I would just like to finish by thanking the other directors – Anne-Marie, Neil, Ali, Geoff and Rich – for their work during the year. And thank you to all those who have been working hard at all these other projects that I have mentioned. I look forward to working with you all on new projects in the coming year!