Category: Festivals

Jun 10

Music Day at Crouch End Festival

Announc­ing a whole day of music on two stages – Crouch End Fes­ti­val’s Music Day on the 11th June on the green out­side Hornsey Town Hall. And there’s an extra Music Night on Thurs­day 15th in the Sup­per Room in Hornsey Town Hall. The event is organ­ised by Crouch End Fes­ti­val and Gourmet Gigs and…

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Jun 5

Space 36: the Brexit issue

Wait­ing to Exhale: a cre­ative explo­ration in response to Brex­it A sub­ur­ban house turned into an exper­i­men­tal and beau­ti­ful space for the cre­ation of project-based art, this is the essence of Space 36, in Fins­bury Park, north Lon­don. In 2016, the own­ers of the house, Ahmed Farooqui and Alan Swann, held an exhi­bi­tion which they chose…

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Dreadzone finish with fireworks 2017
Jun 1

Review: Bearded Theory festival birthday bash

Beard­ed The­o­ry Spring Gath­er­ing or “fes­ti­val” as it is usu­al­ly called, has reached an impor­tant mile­stone – its tenth birth­day. The hairy-faced con­trib­u­tor to the fes­ti­val world has grown and blos­somed, from bum fluff through design­er stub­ble to full beard. The cel­e­bra­tions opened on a per­fect sun­ny Thurs­day after­noon with a sur­pris­ing­ly large crowd, per­haps due to the line­up being stuffed…

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Port Eliot dusk at the bar
May 3

More festival recommends and news

Fes­ti­val sea­son is approach­ing fast – only five weeks till some of us will be sleep­ing, or at least try­ing to, in our tents. Here are a few more events to whet your appetite, and some fes­ti­val news too. Some fes­ti­vals are get­ting low on tick­ets, so don’t pon­der for too long. And if you’re a foodie,…

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Feb 23

The best of festivals for 2017

Rejoice – fes­ti­val sea­son is just around the cor­ner. So what’s in store for 2017? There’s def­i­nite­ly a trend towards offer­ing debates, talks and work­shops. And kids are well catered for with high qual­i­ty and orig­i­nal learn­ing activ­i­ties, take Bluedot’s Plan­e­tar­i­um and Beard­ed The­o­ry’s OFSTED approved school. But hey, let’s not get too seri­ous about it all. Fes­ti­vals pri­mar­i­ly still…

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Oct 17

Desert Trip festival 2016 – view from an English perspective

Desert Trip fes­ti­val, in the Cal­i­for­nia desert: some of the heavy­weights from my teens in one palm-tree-fringed, sun-soaked par­adise. Nor­mal­ly I steer clear of any­thing of this ilk but nev­er­the­less this sound­ed some­what appeal­ing. I remind­ed myself that I’d far rather hang out at my sort of UK fes­ti­vals, hear­ing plen­ty of emerg­ing artists in a friend­ly atmos­phere, all…

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Festival 6 pontoon
Sep 8

Review: Festival Number 6 2016

The good, the bad and the mud­dy… On a pos­i­tive note, Fes­ti­val Num­ber 6 yet again had its moments of music, mag­ic  and dis­cov­ery.  The loca­tion is Port­meiri­on, the beau­ti­ful and quirky Ital­ian vil­lage in north Wales. And it was com­mend­able to note just how many of the artists appear­ing on Fes­ti­val No 6’s var­i­ous stages were from…

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Aug 24

Green Man 2016 review: indie and lots of weather

Fore­casts were for gales, thun­der and tor­ren­tial rain. What we actu­al­ly got were tan­ta­lis­ing peeks of sun, and show­ers which float­ed down with clock­work reg­u­lar­i­ty like a sprin­kler sys­tem. If you’ve ever want­ed a qui­et word with the Met Office when they get things wrong, by for­tu­nate coin­ci­dence there they were, at Ein­stein’s Gar­den, Green Man’s science /…

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Jul 21

World music and world food at Womad

In the third of my ‘fes­ti­vals and food’ series, Gourmet Gigs this week takes a look at the gor­geous glob­al food treats at Wom­ad. The fes­ti­val might be known pri­mar­i­ly for world music, but it has steadi­ly built a name for itself in the food are­na too, and the Taste the World stage has proved pop­u­lar over the…

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