DISPATCHES: DUBLIN, WITH ROGER YATES

In 2010 and 2011, I was honoured to be invited to speak at the inaugural Paris Vegan Day festivals. One of the talks I gave was called “Hello Donald” which was about the best-known of the co-founders of the vegan social movement, Donald Watson. My argument was that, although the movement came into being in during “World War II,” vegan activism in the first decade of the new century was still in its pioneer stage.

Indeed, in terms of the history of the vegan movement, the final years of the 20th century and the first of the 21st, marked the beginning of vegan activism as we know it today. The Paris Vegan Days were organised by Deborah Brown Pivian and her wonderful team, now of the Gentle Gourmet Institute. Deborah spoke about the importance of visibility in terms of outreach. With that, she was unwittingly instrumental in the birth of the Dublin-based all-volunteer Vegan Information Project (VIP) in 2013.

The VIP was born as “mould breakers.” In terms of street activism, the standard outreach model for decades had been a single fold-down table, leaflets, and a couple of banners. We wanted to change all that, indeed, in the name of visibility. VIP co-founder, vegan, and Russian human rights activist, Irena, had successfully negotiated our way into a prestigious location in Dublin called Temple Bar Square. This is a famous spot in the very heart of the Irish capital, and we set up our first 8-hour 3 x 3m gazebo event there for an initial 16-week residency (we ended up there for the best part of 5 years). In the name of “going bigger,” the VIP eventually brought many elements of street activism together: tables, roll-up banners, leaflets, posters, displays, booklets, vegan-friendly food samples, a local vegan restaurant guide, badges, t-shirts, VR goggles, and video screens. In addition, we developed a unique feature called the “tea station.”

The tea station is essentially a small cafe area – a table, chairs, and hot water for tea-making. The outreach advantage of this is significant. It means that members of the public could sit for as long as they need with a VIP volunteer and talk all things vegan. Over recent years, people have become much more “vegan curious,” so the tea station provides a stress-free facility for activists and the public to interact. Several people have returned to VIP events (and to those run by our partners in outreach, VEGO [Vegan Education on the Go]), to say they have gone vegan subsequent to meeting us on the street. Whole families have “gone vegan” this way.

VEGO and VIP are ready to return with a 6x3m double gazebo set-up and “Vegan Street” as soon as we can.

Although COVID-19 has suspended our work, VEGO and VIP are ready to return with a 6 x 3m double gazebo set-up and “Vegan Street” as soon as we can. In the meantime, much of our work has transferred online but we have managed to run three events during the pandemic lock downs which are based on distributing hundreds of samples of Violife plant-based cheeses (each with a Go Vegan World leaflet advertising their excellent downloadable vegan guide). For these fun events, we have joined up with a well-known Elvis Presley impersonator and you really haven’t lived until you see The King giving out vegan-friendly cheeses to cars as they stop at the local traffic lights! On two occasions, buses complete with passengers have stopped for samples, as have taxis with customers inside and, once, even the passing police patrol.

Of course, the best part of these events are the vegan seeds that we are planting. Plenty of vegan-related conversations are had with the people who take samples from our tables. Vegan outreach continues in Dublin!