Stornoway

Stornoway’s environmental statement

Respect for, and appreciation of nature and the environment is absolutely core to our lives, both inside and outside of the band. We are very worried about the future and deeply saddened by the fact that we will be leaving behind a planet in visibly worse condition than when we first discovered our love for nature as children. We believe that to feel a sense of wildness is the first step to developing a life-long connection to nature, and an instinctive awareness of its vital importance. We work actively to make the world a little bit wilder by protecting nature through practical conservation work and raising awareness by engaging our fans with nature through social media and online campaigns, as well as at our shows, many of which we organise in outdoor spaces.

We strive to keep the environmental impacts of touring, music and merchandise production to an absolute minimum, with eco vinyl, recycled card and electric vehicles for example.

Please read more about our conservation story below…. Stornoway must be one of the only bands that regularly stop on tour to go hiking in nature reserves! Wildlife highlights whilst on tour have included dolphins, otters and golden eagles in Scotland, nightingales and bitterns in England, and porcupines, giant redwoods and elk in the USA! We have been involved in a huge range of conservation initiatives including the following:

- Marine Conservation Society partnership
Stornoway released an early single called The Good Fish Guide with all profits donated to the MCS. The CD release included a free wallet-sized printed poster of the MCS Good Fish Guide.
- Concert for conservation We donated £11k to SOS (Sumatran Orangutans Society) after organising a gig especially for it which we called Concert4Conservation; additional fundraising from that event went to Earth Trust and RSPB. It led to many other acts becoming involved in 2013, including Coldplay.
You can read about it here

- RSPB tour + Springwatch
We performed in a number of RSPB nature reserves in 2015 including a stopoff at their HQ and a live broadcast on Springwatch Unsprung.

Norfolk Wildlife Trust Cley Marshes charity gig
We performed at the famous Cley Marshes reserve in 2017.

Conservation Features in publications including The Guardian/RSPB/WWT magazines:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/09/learn-birdsong-alongside-french-and-german
https://www.wwt.org.uk/news-and-stories/blog/from-recording-albums-to-recording-butterfly-numbers-wwts-senior-reserve-warden-brian-briggs-reveals-all https://community.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/b/natureshomemagazine/posts/wrens-ducks-and-rock-39-n-39-roll
https://www.wwt.org.uk/news-and-stories/news/warning-bell-sounds-for-threatened-wetlands-worldwide
RSPB magazine ‘My Best Day’ feature with Brian Briggs of Stornoway
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/former-folk-band-lead-singer-13610585
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/aug/04/on-my-radar-brian-briggs-stornoway

Stornoway’s third album, Bonxie, features the songs and calls of 20 different species of birds. We regularly play recordings of bird songs at our live shows, both between and within songs, with the aim of informing and enthusing our audiences about birds and nature.

In 2019 Oli led a team of data engineers to create the world's first searchable database of plastics recycling plants. Companies needing to manufacture goods or packaging out of recycled plastic now have a simple way to determine where to buy the material, how much to pay for it, and how long it will take to ship, which means that they don't go for virgin plastic any more.

The Big Green Hike. The band did a sponsored hike to raise money for wildlife conservation charities on 2nd April 2023.

Singing with Nightingales, May 2023. Brian hosted a number of nights, bringing people out into woods near Gloucester to duet with nightingales and discuss British wildlife, land management and nature conservation.

WWT London, October 2023. The band launched their fourth album ‘Dig The Mountain!’ at the London Wetland Centre, at a nature-themed event featuring a Q&A hosted by environmentalist Sam Lee.

As an individual, alongside his passion for music Brian has demonstrated a lifelong dedication to nature conservation. He spent 6 months volunteering in practical nature conservation straight after leaving school, and subsequently went on to obtain a DPhil in Wildfowl Conservation from Oxford University, where he met his Stornoway band mates. He has worked professionally on conservation projects in St Lucia, Australia, Spain, Welsh Islands, Oxfordshire, Dorset and Essex, and for the last 8 years he has been the nature reserve manager at the National Wetland Centre of Wales, managing and monitoring a 450 acre wetland for the benefit of wildlife and people, as well as leading guided walks and delivering new habitat creation and restoration projects.

‘I am a nature manager but I don’t manage nature - I nudge it and fight it and kick it about on a small scale, but really it manages me and my days - it is my church, and its power shapes and drives everything I do’