My Time at Greenbelt 2019

Between Friday 23rdAugust and Tuesday 27thAugust, I with thousands of other people, attended the Greenbelt Festival in the fields surrounding Boughton House just outside of Kettering. For those of you that have never heard of it, Greenbelt is an arts, faith and justice festival with a Christian perspective that began in 1974 that has been held at seven different locations in the UK within its lifetime; it’s been at Boughton House for the last six. It is also a registered charity with a board of trustees.

I and my family have been going to the festival on and off since 2005 – the years I did not attend were 2015 and 2018. Although rooted in being ‘an open generous community re-imagining the Christian narrative for the present moment’, it has ‘a belief that embraces instead of excludes’ (Greenbelt official website’s About page). The festival is for Christians of all denominations as well as people of all other faiths and those who have no religious identity at all.

The theme, an annual tradition that began in 1984 and in which artists are encouraged to draw on however possible, of this year’s Greenbelt was ‘Wit and Wisdom’. There were definitely shades of this throughout the weekend, from the hilarious to the thoughtful.

Friday

We (me, my mum, dad and sister) arrived on site around lunchtime and spent the hours up until the festival started putting up our tents, unpacking our things and deciding what we wanted to go to from the guide of events. Greenbelt always sell a big magazine which gives details about each event and speaker/musician and a ‘Daily Diary’ which you can use to plan what you’re seeing when. Every festival attendee also gets a wristband to wear

I went to four events that evening that were a mixture of success – one being fantastic, one alright and two awful. Reverend Kate Bottley (vicar off the TV) did a session of cooking and conversation at the recently new stage ‘Table’ which reminds me a little of the Saturday Kitchen Live set-up. Her best bit was her story about going into the holy baths at Lourdes which led to her point that anyone can find the Holy Spirit at the most unexpected of times and in the most unusual of places.

The other events I attended were seeing the band Sweetcornbread, the Dave Hill Comedy Show, both at the ‘Canopy’ stage, and an 18-25 meet-up in the ‘Little Big Top’. The band were alright but they’re not the sort of music I would usually listen to and Dave Hill was INCREDIBLY rude and unfunny. He was creating shock and tension but not breaking it and I did laugh but because of how humourless it was. The 18-25 thing could have been really good but was poorly supervised. Also, warm cheap champagne anyone?!

Saturday

Day 2 was the first full day of the festival and was made up of many interesting talks. I began by seeing a conversation on the main stage, known as the Glade Big Top, between Reverend Nadia Bolz-Weber and Pádraig óTuama entitled ‘A Shameless Conversation’. As a fan of both, I lapped up the discussion so much that I forgot to write anything down! The only important point I did get which I think everyone should live by is that we do not need to feel shame about who we are.

In the afternoon, I went to two talks – one called ‘Unearthing the Feminine Divine’ at the ‘Grove’ and one named ‘Climate Emergency? What does it mean?’ by Extinction Rebellion at the ‘Hot House’. The first was really fantastic and I made loads of notes on it; it compared and contrasted Christianity and Paganism in relation to the gendered language each uses. The second was alright – although I came away with the new understanding that change will only happen when we realise the present issues, I didn’t feel inspired or that I had learnt anything else new. It was rather preachy and did not give us any clue as to ‘so what?’.

We then ended the day with having drinks at the ‘Blue Nun’ pub with old friends whilst listening to musician Sam Calver in the ‘Canopy’. I had half a pint of Archers pale ale.

Sunday

Day 3 began with the traditional Communion service which this year focused on Christmas. Yes, you heard that right – we did Christmas on one of the hottest days of the year near the end of August. The Nativity story was acted out, Bolz-Weber did a sermon in the style of the Queen’s Christmas Message wearing a crown on the subject of the Virgin Mary, we sang Christmas hymns and took bread and wine in groups. We prayed for our world and saw real life camels.

This was also the day where I saw the most events, a mixture of music, comedy and talks. Both talks, which took place in the ‘Treehouse’, were incredibly inspiring and gave me a lot to think about; one a panel discussion called ‘The World Does Not Need Any More White Saviours’ and the other a talk by Vicky Walker entitled ‘Why Do Christians Still Idolise the Traditional Family’. The music came from Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls, JP Bimeni and the Black Belts and Hope and Social. We then stayed up into the wee small hours to see the comedy show of Bilaf Zafar.

Monday

Day 4, the final full day of the festival and the Bank Holiday, began with the second part of Bolz-Weber’s ‘A Shameless Conversation’ at the ‘Glade Big Top’, this time conversing with Reverend Rachel Mann. This focused more on bodies which were defined as ‘theatres of our lives’ and ‘containers of our whole stories’. Yet, we think of them as ‘containers of disgust and shame due to the policing of desires’. We negotiate a sense of not being good enough yet we must begin to believe that there is a gift in being different.

At lunchtime, I then saw my favourite act of the whole weekend who I saw in Bristol earlier this year – comedy-rap-jazz duo Harry and Chris at the ‘Glade Big Top’. The show was named and included a song entitled ‘This One’s for the Aliens’ and they also sang songs such as ‘Sorry’, ‘You’re in a Womb’ and ‘I’m a 10’. Funniest moment was when Chris said that his favourite type of crisp was Christ. They’re doing another show in Bristol later this month which I hope I can go and see and I highly recommend people try to get to!

I ended my Greenbelt 2019 with three more events – a talk/poetry reading by Rachel Mann on Christina Rosetti in ‘Leaves’, comedy from Ashley Blaker and Imran Yusef in the ‘Pagoda’ called ‘Prophet Sharing’ (one’s a Jew, the other’s Muslim but both are Liverpool FC fans) and music in the form of Gregory Alan Isakov at the ‘Glade Big Top’. The night then went on with a small performance of shadow puppetry and giant model animals called ‘Ghost Caribou’ – it was strangely weird yet beautiful and pagan-like.

What I Wish I’d Seen

Although I saw a lot, there were a lot of other events at the festival that I wish I had gone to but didn’t; either because they were on at the same time as another event that I did go to or because we were eating or due to how boiling the weather was. This included a lot of music which I have now listened to thanks to Greenbelt’s official Spotify playlist – SOAK, Gentlemen of Few, Old Sea Brigade, Liz Laurence, Millie Turner, Stables. The playlist is available to listen to here – https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5e10w3IHyY4Ijmf1NgVli3.

I also missed seeing Harry and Chris’ separate shows as well as Russell Brand talking about spirituality and Jack Monroe cooking. The festival always hosts brilliant performing arts in their theatre venue the ‘Playhouse’ but I didn’t go in it at all this year which was a shame. This meant that I missed both plays of ‘The Artist’ and ‘A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad)’.

Other Things and Final Thoughts

This has been my longest blog post so far (I’m sorry but also not sorry) but I’d like to end with some food/shop-related points. First, when really hot, totally recommend either a cold brew from the Tiny Tea Tent or a can of coke from the Christian Aid tent. For lunch, the falafel and halloumi wrap flatbread wrap from Lord Falafel is TO DIE FOR. Dinner-wise, the Tibetan Kitchen do amazing curry. If you want some theological reading material, there’s G-Books and if you want festival merchandise then G-Store is where you wanna go. And if you need a pick-me-up in the freezing cold in the wee hours, having a cheeky hot chocolate from the Kindred Café in the camping area is heavenly.

Though I have a feeling that a lot of you might not be religious, I hope that this has given you some sort of sense of my time at Greenbelt and that some of you might want to go to a future one. Let me know what festivals you’ve been to this summer!

Beth x