8 March 2002
Photocall, 12 noon, Friday 8 March 2002, south side of Millennium Bridge,
Bankside, London SE1.

Julia Sawalha joins women taking action for a healthier planet

The actress Julia Sawalha will help launch WEN's new project, Women Taking Action for a Healthier Planet at a media photocall on International Women's Day, Friday, March 8.

She will join WEN supporters in symbolically casting their visions for a healthier planet onto the waters of the Thames from the new, Millennium Bridge. The river will carry these collective wishes out into the oceans of the world.

Famed for her portrayal of Saffy in the TV comedy, Absolutely Fabulous, Julia shares her character's concern for the environment and the health of present and future generations. In keeping with the aims of the new project, she will arrive in a pedal-powered rickshaw.

Women Taking Action for a Healthier Planet is a three-year project, supported by the Community Fund, to set up a self-sustaining network of groups across the UK, empowering women (and men) to do something about links between the environment and human health. Groups will be able to choose the issues they campaign on locally but they are likely to focus on things like the cocktail of synthetic chemicals in every day use, reducing environmental links to breast cancer and other health problems, using consumer power to demand less polluting or wasteful products and packaging, and encouraging the supply of locally-grown organic food.

WEN's Health Co-ordinator, Helen Lynn, said: "People who are concerned about the cocktail of synthetic chemicals that surround us in the air, water, land and even in our food - and the untold damage they may be doing to our environment and our current and future health - can get involved with WEN and turn their concern into action."

Contact: Liz Sutton, Press Officer t: 020 7481 9004, f: 020 7481 9144, e: info@wen.org.uk

Notes to editors

1. WEN is a national charity and membership organisation which campaigns on environmental and health issues from a women's perspective. It educates, informs and empowers women and men who care about the environment.
2. Gather at the south side of the Millennium Bridge, outside Tate Modern. The actual photoshoot will take place on the bridge. Julia and others will cast rice paper slips, on which their visions for the future are written. Rice paper has been chosen because it is edible and biodegradable and will not pollute the water or harm fish.
3. The Millennium Bridge has been chosen as it symbolises a vision of a pedestrian-friendly future, and spans the Thames which is now recognised as Europe's cleanest industrial river.
4. Equipment, eg, camera stands, cannot be placed on the bridge. If the bridge is too busy, the shoot will take place on Bankside just alongside it.
5. Julia Sawalha first came to prominence in the youth drama series 'Press Gang' on ITV in 1989. She has appeared in the BBC dramas 'Martin Chuzzlewit' and 'Pride and Prejudice' and in 'Second Thoughts' with Lynda Bellingham on ITV. She is perhaps best known as Edina Monsoon's daughter Saffron in the hit comedy series, 'Absolutely Fabulous'.