Common Ground Bookings so far.

Numbers – up to date on 27/12/19

So far 82 groups have registered onto our booking system. Of these, 40 are Woodcraft Groups/ districts and 42 are International groups.

When each of these groups register they give an estimate of how many people they are planning to bring. If you add all of these up you currently get 1,761. So far these groups have booked and paid deposits for 804 people.

However there are quite a few Woodcraft districts and international groups who are actively planning to come but who have not yet booked on. As an organising team we have been in contact with districts both by phone and at regional and international gatherings working out who is intending to come and how many people they might bring. So our current estimate is to expect between 2,500 and 3,500 campers.

To give this some context of previous camps in the UK, there were 2,400 people who came to CoCamp in 2011 and there were 4,200 people who came to Global Village. So Common Ground will probably be a bit bigger than last international camp, but smaller than the time before that.

Lots of internationals

The main thing I want to mention is the large number of international delegations we have coming. Currently my estimation would be that we have around 2,000 people from Woodcraft and around 1,000 people from international groups.

On the one hand this is great: I think Common Ground is going to feel very international, there will be lots of opportunities for our young people to meet other young people from across the globe. A bit of positive internationalism I think we could all do with.

However it does mean we should be clear that ⅓ of our camp will be internationals and other than a couple of large SJD groups for Germany they will all need Woodcraft districts to support them with equipment. By this I mean lending them tents to sleep in and sharing kitchen tents and marquees to collectively cook and eat under.

Very approximately we are talking about 30 Villages of 100 people, so for example if you are planning to come as a district of 65 people, you should expect to share your village with 35 internationals.

I’m confident between all the districts we have coming we have enough equipment to feed and house everyone. However I want to decrease the pressure put on volunteers at our big camps: having lots of dry space if it rains and spare equipment if things break would help.

Making things easy on ourselves

There are a couple of things we can do to make life on camp easier for everyone.

Bring your personal tent if you have one. This way any district tents can go further when housing internationals.
If you know about any spare equipment (I’m mainly thinking about garages of districts who might have recently closed) could you let us know.
If you are in a district who wants to share equipment with another district who is bringing theirs, please consider budgeting some money (I suggest £10 per person) as a contribution towards their transport costs.
Caravans/ Camper-vans – we already know of a couple of people with access needs who cannot sleep on the ground, if you have something you could bring and wouldn’t mind lending, or know of a cheap way we could get hold of one I would love to hear it.

Next steps

The main booking deadline is the 1st of May. We will only be able to finalise all of the villages after this date. However we are going to continue talking to districts and putting together as many villages as we can, for those who want to plan things out early. If you are coming to Common Ground but have not yet registered on our booking system, do let us know how many people you are likely to bring and if you have any preferences of who you would like to camp with.

If you want to get in contact please message info@commonground.camp then Pauliina (the Common Ground Project Manager) or I will pick it up.

Blue Skies

Tom