Ray Mears is Eden's champion for the Edge

World-famous survival expert Ray Mears is backing the Eden Project’s bid to win £50 million for its next phase, the Edge.

Eden is one of four projects on a final shortlist in the Big Lottery Fund’s:  The People’s £50 Million Contest which will feature in an ITV competition in December.

Ray Mears is a long-term admirer of Eden – home of the world’s biggest greenhouses – so was a natural choice as champion of Eden’s TV campaign to win the public vote. The project considers it a major coup to have his support. 

He will feature in an ITV programme devoted to the Edge bid, part of a series leading up to the biggest-ever public vote on Lottery good cause funding.

The presenter of such acclaimed series as Bushcraft Survival and Wild Food recently met chief executive Tim Smit to talk through what the Edge will mean to Cornwall, the UK and the world, and meet team members, visitors and school groups.

He said that Eden made people feel confident about the future and not excluded and predicted that the Edge would have a massive impact.

He said:  “I love the Eden Project. It’s an amazing place. The moment I set foot in the Eden Project I am instantly transported back to the rainforest and jungle and your mind goes into jungle mode.”

He said the Edge engaged with issues that people get really confused about and that Eden was extremely good at interpretative work, explaining things in ways that everyone can understand.

The Edge would also become a forum where different world experts and communities can come together and generate new ideas:  “The answers to the problems we face as a society are not going to be found in people of our age.  It’s in the youngsters, the young children that come in here, and if we can inspire those young minds nature will do the work for us,” he said.

Ray Mears added:  “Of all the projects that I’m aware of I can’t think of any that also have such an inclusive and positive outflowing of energy into their local communities and certainly Eden Project has been an incredibly important part of the Cornish landscape.”

Eden’s chief executive Tim Smit said:  “We are delighted to have Ray Mears as our champion. His lifelong experience of working with people who on the surface have little but whose lives are immeasurably rich provides inspirational insights into some of the work we are doing.   There could not be a better advocate for the Edge.”

The Edge represents the next great evolution of the project.  Its scale and ambition will make the Edge an international icon of sustainability, showing that mankind is capable of amazing things.
The building will be a model of cutting-edge architecture and technology, harvesting water and energy from the sun, wind, and rain to show how we all might live in the future.
It will be a testament to one-planet living, built to the lowest possible carbon footprint and designed to last.  Inside there will be amazing desert, oasis and water gardens on a scale never attempted undercover.