Viva!Life Issue 57 | Winter 2014
Wherever you are reading this magazine, whether it be in a warm and luxurious four poster bed or crammed on the tube on a cold winter’s day, I really hope you relish it – the last of our bumper 20th anniversary issues!
Thank you so much for supporting Viva! and for joining in our 20th anniversary celebrations.
We had some amazing entries to our video comp but the clear winner for the 18 and overs is Georgia Burrows who spent days making a creative, pacey, poignant veggie parody of pop song, Royals (see page 7).
We have been inundated with entries to our photo comp – and the winners will be announced in the next issue.
The 20th fundraising dinner was incredible (page 18) – charged with positive emotion and goodwill (and delicious food and wine!).
A massive thank you to artist Zeena Thompson who donated so much of her time to draw the gorgeous Viva! Superheroes for our auction and to our artist-in-residence Phil McCulloch-Downs, whose Green Man raised £1000 in a bidding war (and then raised an additional kind £450 donation)!
At our dinner we announced the winners of our special 20th anniversary awards. Many of you voted for the winners and they are listed on page 17. Congratulations to them all.
And a heartfelt thanks to the wonderful six women who won our Action for Animals Awards (pages 20-21).
Not only have we launched our first ever recipe book, the Viva! Cookbook, but the Editor of Viva!life, Tony Wardle has published his stunning novel, POD (page45) www.vivashop.org.uk/pod. Both are not to be missed. So that’s my Christmas presents sorted!
Talking of Christmas, I’m delighted to welcome back Chava Eichner. A celebrated vegan cook, she has produced a wonderful festive selection for us on pages 28-31.
I hope with all my heart that the launch of our campaign, Life is Cheep? (page 11) will help people turn away from white meat and choose recipes, like Chava’s, to rejoice in life – all life – on Christmas day. This campaign is so important as there is a particularly astounding level of ignorance when it comes to chickens! These bright, magnificent birds are dismissed by people as stupid and worthless; they are anything but. The numbers are crazy, one billion little lives wiped out each year in the UK alone. So much cruelty on a mind boggling scale. Even top scientists studying chickens finally acknowledge: “chickens are smart and they understand their world, which raises troubling questions about how they are treated on factory farms.” If you pick just one campaign to join, let this be the one!
A very happy, vegan festive season to you.
Yours for the animals
Juliet Gellatley
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