Imagine a street one evening. All the houses are lit up. Inside, people play with their computer games, watch TV and get toasty by their gas fires. Imagine the next evening, one house throws a Power Party. They’ve invited all the neighbours, reminding them to turn down the power before they leave.

Or, imagine that an elderly person living alone struggles to pay fuel bills so makes a deal with a friendly neighbour in a similar predicament. Once a week each one will take turns to cook and share their warm room for the evening.

Or, if you like big gestures, imagine a travelling arts festival that draws thousands of people out of their homes to enjoy film, music and theatre all powered by green energy.

Getting out of the house, sharing power with others, and finding green ways of making parties or events, is what Power Parties is about. The idea came to me after a sleepless night wondering what I could do to reduce carbon emissions after the UN report on climate change. The next day I just went ahead and made a blog site http://powerparties.wordpress.com. The site is to share ideas and resources for power-saving events. If you are organising any event, of any kind, you can badge it as a Power Party and link to the site.

I’ve had some really positive responses to the idea and some people are putting it into practice. For example, some friends are having a Clothes Swap party next week. An artist called Paul Conneally is asking participants in his Renewability Haiku Hikes to turn down power at home.

There are some things that make for the best kind of Power Parties, but there’s no fixed way of doing them: You welcome all ages so nobody needs to stay home; you keep it local or choose a venue that is easy to get to; you remind guests to turn down power; you plan ‘light footprint’ activities such as walking, picnics or unamplified music.

What the campaign needs is a great logo that says This is a Power Party, and I’m hoping a designer will help out with that. It would be useful too to have a badge for blogs and e-mail invites that links direct to the website. It would also be fab if people can share any invitation designs or photos of events on the Flickr page www.flickr.com/groups/powerparties If people use their own slogans or logos in these, it doesn’t matter - Power Parties isn’t a corporate brand! Comments, weblinks and regular posts on the blog are welcome too.