From the 11 to 13 May this year, Greenpop is hosting the 2nd Reforest Fest at Platbos forest. A weekend festival with a difference: plant over 1000 trees, camp in the ancient Platbos forest, enjoy live music under the tree canopy and more.

The idea of a solar-powered recording studio seems to be gaining traction as studios convert and bands both big and small seek out an alternative energy recording solution.

Growing up as a musician in South Africa I witnessed first hand the man-made obscenity that was apartheid and used music to protest against injustice.

The United Nations climate talks have unfortunately been just that for 16 years – just talk and no real action, the most famous of these so far being the failed conference in Copenhagen in 2009. After the deep disappointment of Copenhagen, a South African anti-apartheid activist teasingly noted that the talks had failed because the climate movement didn’t have a song!

My reason for choosing the 'Coffee-Can Drum' craft is; when I observe a young child banging on different surfaces two things becomes very clear; tapping on things comes very natural to us and forms part of how we discover this world. 

Once a year the Surfrider Foundation Europe launches clean-up weekends at lakes, rivers and beaches to raise awareness about pollution and littering.

Music, art and waste formed a fusion of culture and new creativity in Cape Town during the 'Infecting the City' Spier Public Arts festival. There was the chanting of Sufi sacred texts, martial art based on the knife-fighting techniques of the Cape Flats, hip-hop 'B-Boy duels', and traditional riel dances of Khoisan farm workers.

The third in a trilogy of albums about nature, which began with 2006's justly lauded 'Palo Santo,' the air is thick on Shearwater's latest album The Golden Archipelago. It's the kind of atmosphere that resonates, as if a magnetic presence is matching the vocal gusto, and shimmering instrumentals of the band itself - and that's saying something.

`to see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower.` william blake
I am walking with John Roff up the slopes of a krans on the Hilton College Estate 'some 600 hectares of wild land that lies between the school and the Umgeni River where giraffes, zebra, buck and blue wildebeest roam. John is the environmental education officer of the school. I have come to the College as writer in residence and John takes me into the wilderness so I can experience the wonders and intricacies of creation.