Films at FarmED
Jul 22, 2026
Two films were screened at FarmED earlier this month. On the surface there’s a huge difference between The People’s Emergency Briefing and Cotswolds: Field and Folk, but they actually have much in common.
The People’s Emergency Briefing is a hard-hitting documentary featuring scientists warning of the impact of climate change on national security, food security, health, economics, food and nature. Meanwhile, Cotswolds: Field and Folk, is a beautiful and uplifting film that explores farmers and rural communities and the people who shape our landscape and was filmed over the course of eighteen months, celebrating 60 years of the Cotswolds as a designated National Landscape.
Both films are currently on tour. The People’s Emergency Briefing is being shown the length and breadth of the country, in two thousand locations, from art galleries to private homes, from Cornwall to the Outer Hebrides, while Cotswolds: Field & Folk is being screened in farms, theaters and village halls across our region.
In November 2025, the National Emergency Briefing brought together leading experts to present the latest evidence on the climate and nature crisis to politicians and other influential people in Westminster. Ten of the UK’s leading experts briefed an invited audience of more than 1,200 politicians and leaders from business, culture, faith, sport and the media in Westminster. The briefing set out the implications of climate and nature breakdown. Its purpose was to call for a clear, evidence-led national emergency briefing and set out why it’s necessary. The film looks at problems and offers solutions, including ‘a great food transformation’ built on four main pillars - shifting to plant-rich diets, reducing food waste and improving food production. ‘We can cut over-reliance on imports and feed many more people per hectare on a plant-rich diet. The UK could be largely self-sufficient in many major crops if we made a shift,’ concluded Professor Paul Behrens from the University of Oxford.
Cotswolds: Field & Folk is also framed by the current challenges facing farmers in terms of climate, policy, finance and the massive loss of biodiversity. ‘Farmers in the Cotswolds are working within a critical moment,’ says Director, Tea Smart.
It’s an ultimately hopeful film, showing how combining traditional knowledge with modern technology and working with nature rather than against it, farmers and conservationists in the Cotswolds are making changes now which will benefit us all in the future.
‘The decisions we make in the coming few years could have consequences that echo for generations,’ says Mike Berner’s Lee of The People’s Emergency Briefing.
Both screenings were followed by discussion, bringing farmers, officials and local people together to debate and air their views and reactions to the films.
‘If there is a moment for greater honesty, public engagement and collective ambition, it is now,’ says Mike Berners-Lee.
Both films are well worth watching, Cotswolds: Field and Folk has more screenings coming up, and we are showing the People's Emergency Briefing again on September 9th 2026.
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