DCAN volunteers win 2025 show award
Dorset Climate Action Network (DCAN) were joint winners in August with Sustainable Shaftesbury Advisory Committee (SuSAC), Planet Shaftesbury and Sustainable Dorset of the best Small Trade Stand trophy at the Gillingham & Shaftesbury Show 2025.
The award was made by Gillingham town mayor Cllr Fiona Cullen who judged the small trade stands for show organisers the Gillingham & Shaftesbury Agricultural Society.
She said she awarded the trophy to us not only because of the quality of the displays on the stand but also for the way the stand engaged with the public. ‘I gave bonus marks if the message was about the environment, creating stronger communities, preventing loneliness and isolation, and sustainable innovation and this stand had all those qualities,’ she said.
DCAN decided to have a stand at the show with Shaftesbury volunteers mainly to help promote public interest in Dorset COP 25 that’s in north Dorset this year at Sturminster Newton’s The Exchange on 1 November.
Information on the third Dorset COP is online at: https://www.sustainabledorset.org/post/dorset-cop-2025-turning-environmental-ambition-into-action.
Dorset Climate Action Network (DCAN) volunteers and volunteers from Sustainable Shaftesbury Advisory Committee (SuSAC) and Planet Shaftesbury with the Best Small Trade Stand Trophy won at the Gillingham & Shaftesbury Show in August 2025. From L to R: Helen Sumbler (DCAN), Colin Tracy (DCAN), Carole Lehman (GBDH), SuSAC volunteers John Nelson and Richard Thomas, and from Planet Shaftesbury Rachel Bodle and Diana Harris.
G&S Show 25-2: Shaftesbury’s mayor Cllr Virginia Edwyn-Jones with SuSAC chair Richard Thomas and vice-chair Jenny Morisetti and Dorset Climate Action Network volunteers John Calder (GBDH project manager) and Belinda Bawden (DCAN co-founder).
Historic note: The first Gillingham & Shaftesbury Agricultural Show was held in 1930 as the result of an agreement between the Gillingham Agricultural Society, founded in 1860, and the Shaftesbury Farms Club, founded two years later. The show alternated between Gillingham (on even years) and Shaftesbury (odd years) until 1993, when the society acquired its present permanent home at Motcombe. Reconstituted between 2003-2006, the society is now a charity that aims to support the countryside and farming communities. Its annual two-day show in August claims to attract around 20,000 people from a wide area in Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire.
The trophy was last presented in 2019 and appears not to have been awarded since the cancellation of the show in 2020 because of the Covid pandemic but the show organisers were unable to say why they had revived it this year.