A NEW date has been set for a green festival close to the famous Cerne Abbas giant.

The Earthwise 2005 festival was postponed in August, organisers said, because of 'circumstances beyond our control'.

But they have just announced a new date for the event and they are hoping that all the people who showed an interest in coming to this year's postponed festival will sign up for the new one.

Bob Buxton, director of Earthwise, said: "We were disappointed that we had to postpone the event in the summer but we said we would organise a new date and we have. The festival will now take place from June 1 to 4, 2006.

"We had a lot of good people coming along to the August event. They were disappointed that we postponed, but hopefully they will come along this time instead."

Mr Buxton said it was early days in the planning for the 2006 Earthwise event but it would follow a similar formula to one held at Osmington in 2004.

Renewable energy was harnessed to run the music stages, stalls and exhibitions, including one arena powered by children pedalling a bicycle. He said that a similar system will operate at the rescheduled festival.

He added: "The prime concern of Earthwise is education.We are an environmental and ecologically-sound event that aims to show people just what they can do.

"We have a lot of evidence from our event last year that people went away thinking differently - so if that's the case it makes it all very worthwhile.

"We put a lot of effort into making people think differently about the way the way they live their lives. There's nothing like it in Dorset, and although we are disappointed to postpone the festival this year we are looking forward to staging it again next year."

He said details of the attractions being lined up would be made available soon on the website at www. earthwise-uk.com