For many years the Greenbelt Festival has been quietly wearing the crown which Latitude recently claimed as its own. Greenbelt is a diverse music and arts festival, and has been mixing up different genres of music with theatre, art, film, seminars, campaigning and activities for more than thirty years. It is very family friendly and caters for ages 0 to 18 through a thriving children’s festival and a youth programme with dedicated areas for teenagers.
Greenbelt is set apart from most other summer festivals because of its strong Christian ethos and inclusion of worship amongst the activities. It’s an extremely liberal and open-minded place welcoming people of all denominations, different faiths and of none and tends to attract people who feel “spiritual” but disillusioned with traditional, organised church. The strong ethics are reflected in the campaigning which is always evident and also in the type of stalls, many being fair-trade and organic (clothes, food and drink).
The seminar topics range from deep, meaningful questions on life to a light-hearted look at how to ensure your funeral is well attended and topics such as “Hope is Where Your Arse Is”. The music programme has everything from revered classical composer Sir John Tavener, through the sublime Duke Special and Aqualung, jazz from Soweto Kinch and Soukous from Kanda Bongo Man, through to erm, Chas and Dave. Other performances include Bassline circus with ‘Advertigo’, a grittier version of Cirque du Soleil featuring VJ-ing, Chinese pole and acrobats, as well as ‘Return to the Forbidden Planet’ and ‘Accidental Death of a Terrorist’ (from the Edinburgh Festival fringe). There’s a huge range of activities which include puppet skills, salsa workshops, a skate-park, African body percussion, speed dating, kite-making and bungee trampolining.
Greenbelt has been based at the scenic Cheltenham Racecourse since 1999. Festival-goers camp in the middle of the racecourse, with the beautiful Cotswold Hills in the background. The venues are a mixture of outdoor and indoor - outside are the grandstand, mainstage, arena stage, YMCA 24 hour café with its Humanic stage, as well as the Performance Café and Big Top. Lots of the indoor racecourse venues are also utilised – the Underground (Tommy Atkins Bar), the Winged Ox and the Centaur which is an impressive space, apparently one of the largest venues in south-west England, holding up to 4,000 standing.
The campsite is open from 10 am. We arrived late afternoon and managed to avoid the two hour queue of cars waiting to get on to the campsite by parking up and walking the camping gear through. The festival officially started at 5pm and by the time we’ve set up and arrived at mainstage, there’s already been bands, comedy, circus, films, poetry, art therapy, meditation and seminars across the site.
Billy Bragg, singer-songwriter, best-selling author and political activist is the mainstage headliner on Friday. He made his first album 25 years ago and last appeared at Greenbelt in 2003. The ex-punk rocker plays solo, sipping a cup of tea between songs and, as well as his better known material, he plays some new songs which should appear on a CD release sometime early next year – ‘Sing Their Souls Back Home’ and ‘Farm Boy’ which is dedicated to British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. He asks the audience to choose a “busking song” for him to do, either the Carpenters or Dylan. The audience choose the Carpenters and he attempts ‘Superstar’ before abandoning it in favour of Dylan’s ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’.
He finishes his main set with ‘I Keep Faith’ and then begins to play his entire first album for the encore which apparently lasted 17 minutes in total. He plays a few of the songs and then ends with ‘A New England’. Billy Bragg later turns up to play a couple of songs in ‘Last Orders’ which takes place in the Centaur and is a variety show featuring interviews, music, comedy, illusionists, magicians and the occasional tarantula.
review by Helen OSullivan photos by Helen OSullivan
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Greenbelt Arts Festival 
