A meeting of good people, good food and good vibes
Market stalls present their work and skills at the Vegan Things Night Market.
Pirates Sports Club in Greenside was packed with attendees of the Vegan Things Night Market and Yoga with Dize.
The market offered attendees a chance to interact with food stall sellers, vegan product stalls, music and more on April 7.
Co-organiser of the market event and chef Luke Spagnoletti said they started the vegan night market because they wanted to create awareness around veganism. “There has always been a sort of stigma around it and we wanted to bring it more into the mainstream. We also wanted to create a fun, interactive experience and broaden the scope of making veganism more accessible to a lot of people.”
The chef, who prefers to identify as ‘plant-based’, said food has always been a very important part of his life and that it was a journey he began about six years ago.
The market has been running for about a year now. “Last year, during Covid-19, we took a couple of knocks as most businesses did. We, however, persevered and made it through. The vegan community in Johannesburg is definitely growing and there is a new, younger generation coming up.”
Neesha Mistry of Save Soil, who has a stall at the market, said the movement is a global initiative about ‘saving the soil’. “All we are doing is bringing about awareness so that people can join the movement. From there, we are getting schoolchildren to write letters and make art forms so we can take all of that to Cop 15 [15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties] which is a saving-the-planet initiative where stakeholder countries will come to an agreement to set a plan for nature’s recovery.”
Mistry said they would then present all the art forms and letters at the conference to get governments to change their policies around the soil.
Giving a reason why the soil needs saving, Mistry said, “Because of the types of agriculture happening, there is a lot of unnatural stuff that is being put in the soil. The aim is to put organic material back into the soil so that we can get more of the necessary biodiversity back again, so as to have richer soil. To get in contact, you can visit savesoil.org or cosciousplanet.org.”
The music providers at the market – Daniel ‘DJ Paws’ Marais, Sean Jacobs and Wynand Kruger of Sync Sound and Entertainment – said they were not vegans but the food tasted great and they recommended it. Marais said the name DJ Paws was inspired by his love for animals and their logo was also a paw sign. Jacobs added that the music played was ‘market music’ which meant that it was not too noisy for patrons.
To get in touch with the trio, you can follow them on Facebook at sync_entertainment.sa or email info@syncsa.co.za
Follow us on Twitter @RK_Gazette for more community event news.
ALSO READ:
