Good morning everyone. I’m Steve Wainwright from Elmley Town Council and I organise the town’s volunteer scheme. I’m delighted you’re all interested in joining the scheme. Our volunteers help to create a sense of community among the many people who live in our historic town of Elmley and make residents and visitors feel welcome at local events. First, I’ll mention just a few of the activities that volunteers carry out. One is to walk around the town centre streets wearing our volunteer T-shirt. Tourists often ask how to get to a particular shop, and they might also be grateful for recommendations about what to visit. The town holds a large number of concerts each year and part of the volunteers’ role is to get everyone in the audience to the right place as smoothly as possible. You’d be surprised how many people buy tickets, then don’t check them, and head for the wrong section of the hall. Volunteers may get involved with community groups, such as sports clubs or gardeners’ associations. Here, the volunteers talk about how groups can help each other. For instance, a writing group might want to travel to another town to hear a talk by a well-known author, but may not know that another club has a coach they could travel in. The town produces a monthly magazine, and anyone who lives in the town can send in articles. It’s free to residents and is paid for by local businesses. That’s the responsibility of the council’s advertising department. We depend on volunteers though to find out what people think of events they’ve attended and any suggestions they have for the future. The volunteers then send a summary to the editors. There are a number of clubs for retired people and every year the council arranges lunch for all the members. The volunteers welcome the guests and when everyone’s sitting down and relaxing after the meal, some volunteers put on a show. Usually around half an hour of songs and short plays, the club members really welcome the chance to chat to the volunteers at these events. The town council has a website, of course, and volunteers are asked to help by making sure residents know about it. It updated every day with information about future activities and we want as many people as possible to use it.

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As you probably know, the town arranges three major festivals every year, and they all depend on a large number of volunteers. The book festival lasts three days, and uses several venues which all need volunteers. More are needed for the music festival because that lasts a whole week, and even more help is required for the science festival, even though it’s only two days long. It involves quite a lot of venues, though. It’s a good idea to help at the festival you’re most interested in, because you can attend most of the events for free. We try to use volunteers who are flexible, though, because some festival events are held outdoors and the weather may affect the size of the audience and even whether the event can take place so there can be changes at short notice. What essential though is being able to get on well with other people and also to deal with someone who’s behaving badly, as occasionally happens. Our plan is to get you all working in September, after a week’s training starting on the 2nd, so we’ll be timetabling you for duties the following week from the 9th onward. Later in the week beginning September 23rd we have a chat with each of you to find out how you feel about being a volunteer and what extra support you need. As a thank you to the volunteers we arrange an annual event. In recent years we’ve had a party in the Town Hall and last year a barbecue in Chamber Park. Our forthcoming event is a trip along the canal from here to Dewhurst and back. It’s on Saturday, September the 28th. And if you’d like to attend, you can sign up once you start work. Now, this is the Volunteer’s T-shirt.

ROSIE: Colin, I’m really struggling to think of a topic for our human geography assignment.

COLIN: Me too, Rosie. I’ll tell you what, let’s think about the different aspects of human geography and see if we can narrow the topic down a bit to help us decide.

ROSIE: OK. So one aspect is population. That would be all about population density and migration and so on. Lots of facts and statistics. Maybe a bit boring?

COLIN: Yeah, but quite straightforward to find on the internet.

ROSIE: Suppose so. How about health? I’d never thought about the links between that and geography until Professor Lee gave us that lecture on cholera. How in the 19th century, a physician used street plans and plans of water supplies to find the source of a cholera epidemic.

COLIN: Yes, fascinating, wasn’t it? Or we could do something more general like economies.

ROSIE: So how financial and commercial factors are linked to the physical environment.

COLIN: Yeah.

ROSIE: I thought that had been taken off the syllabus for this year.

COLIN: Has it?

ROSIE: I'm not sure but it might be best to avoid it.

COLIN: OK. Maybe we could do something on culture. We had that lecture about culture and geography last week.

ROSIE: I didn’t get much out of that. It was all so general and the lecturer didn’t give any useful examples.

COLIN: Yeah, I hardly took any notes. It didn’t seem worth it.

ROSIE: Me neither.

COLIN: We could focus on poverty. That’s something that’s a global problem.

ROSIE: The trouble is, Dr Lee was saying, that you have to be careful with some of the figures relating to poverty. They’re sometimes deliberately manipulated.

COLIN: You mean the information gets changed for political reasons?

ROSIE: That sort of thing, yes.

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ROSIE: So what are we going to do our assignment on? I’ll tell you what. One of the possibilities we have discussed is urbanisation and now over half the world population lives in cities. That's really important.

COLIN: OK, good idea Rosie. Let's do that.

ROSIE: I love living in a big city but of course there are problems.

COLIN: Things like theft and robbery?

ROSIE: Yes, but where I come from, that’s linked to another more serious issue, which is that a lot of people don’t have jobs. That’s getting worse and worse. And we also still have quite a lot of people who are homeless, though that’s not quite so bad as it was.

COLIN: It would be nice to talk about some positive developments, like some of the new developments on the outskirts of cities.

ROSIE: Yeah, they’ve opened some massive new shopping centres outside my city.

COLIN: Yeah, the same with mine, but it means a lot of the shops in the city centre are closing down. But the outskirts are ideal for buildings that need a lot of space, like for conferences. They’ve opened a couple of big ones.

ROSIE: Yes, we’ve got some too. It’d be nicer to have more facilities for things like football too, but that’s not happening where I live.

COLIN: Same in my area.

ROSIE: We could include something about developing disused industrial sites. It seems like a good idea because you’re not doing any harm to the natural environment.

COLIN: Yeah, but aren’t the buildings architecturally significant?

ROSIE: Not really. And what people forget is that they often used quite dangerous materials, chemicals and things, which haven’t been properly cleared away, so the whole site has to be made safe.

COLIN: Hmm, that can’t be cheap. And I bet it’s often not budgeted for .

ROSIE: You’re right.

COLIN: Have you read about Masdar City?

ROSIE: In Abu Dhabi? Yes. It was designed to be a green city, wasn’t it? That might be a good example of a city which set out to depend entirely on renewable energy.

COLIN: Yes. We should say something about that. It was designed to be totally pedestrianised too wasn’t it with the transport underground.

ROSIE: Yes and they had big plans for recycling to reduce waste to the lowest possible level But let’s stick to talking about power sources.

COLIN: Then there’s that ecotown in England, Greenhill Abbotts. It set out to conform to the usual principles, sustainability and so on. A lot of people were against it at first. They said the plans were unrealistic. I’m not sure how far they’ve got with it. I’ll check.

ROSIE: Right. So it looks as if we have a sort of plan.

There are trends in food much as there are trends in clothing. Interest in food fashions has risen rapidly since the birth of the smartphone when people first began taking photos of their food and instantly sharing them with their friends. The food industry in the UK in particular is obsessed with finding and exploiting the next big food trend. Marketeers aim to create a huge demand for a food item which was previously unknown or not needed. One of the most effective ways of promoting a new food product is by using social media influencers as brand ambassadors In return for free samples many influencers will post content about a product although there are influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers who can command large fees for their services. Companies which sell vegan produce were pioneers in being able to increase sales really quickly in this way. For a food item to become really popular, it has to be readily available. So supermarkets have a role to play in creating a new food trend. They have dedicated teams closely following which new products or ingredients are trending on social media and are particularly interested in what well-known chefs are putting on their menus. I’d like to look at a few examples of marketing campaigns which were really successful in launching a new fashion trend. Starting in the 1990s with the avocado. A British PR company was hired to raise its profile and stimulate demand. They paid for a group of journalists to travel out to South Africa to meet avocado farmers. Articles written following this visit helped to educate the British public about the avocado, which at this time was certainly not the daily staple it’s since become. Advertisements were designed to promote the avocado as a superfood, rich in nutrients and therefore beneficial for health. Avocados became hugely fashionable, and within a few years UK avocado sales had grown from £13 million annually to around £150 million, making it one of the most successful fresh produce campaigns in UK history. Oat milk is a recent example of a new product which became fashionable very quickly. Now there are many brands available but one company which had early success was the Swedish brand Oatly They attracted a lot of attention with a media campaign which used provocation as a way of getting their message across effectively. The fact that this campaign aggravated competitors producing milk from dairy cows was seen as a plus, as it helped to make oat milk seem cool. In the USA, the brand decided against a big retail launch in favour of getting the product into coffee chains, which removed the need for a big advertising budget. This proved far more effective than offering samples in supermarkets. Oat milk had an advantage over other alternative milk products, such as almond milk. Many consumers prefer it because it has less of an impact on the environment. It requires significantly less water to produce than other alternative milk products and it also has a relatively low carbon footprint. Norwegian scray, a rarely available seasonal fish delicacy, otherwise known as Arctic cod, is now found on the menus of Michelin-starred restaurants throughout Europe. The demand for skrei has been used by a food marketing agency to build the reputation of Norway’s fisheries in general. Marketing surveys have shown that a significant number of shoppers now associate Norway with excellent seafood. Food trends can be considered a good thing in some ways, as they can benefit farmers and food producers enormously. The public can also be encouraged to buy things which are more sustainably produced. But ethical concerns have been raised about the effects a surge in demand can cause. Quinoa is a classic example. This plant is native to Peru and when demand peaked some years ago, the price soared, making it unaffordable for local people. While the popularity of quinoa has benefited farmers financially there have been other negative consequences. As demand grew, farmers began working the land all year round in order to produce more quinoa. One issue has been that the fertility of the soil decreased dramatically, which could potentially lead to desertification in some areas. Another example would be the case of…