This year Greenbelt Festival is inviting everyone to Dream On. It’s time to dream big, be imaginative, find courage, be bold, embrace creativity, and find inspiration. Greenbelt wants to encourage festival-goers to create and model the world they want to live in. Come and see what you can achieve if you Dream On.
The festival’s creative director, Paul Northup comments, ‘”Dream On” is often seen as a throwaway phrase, something used to play down hope and possibility. But we want to rehabilitate and reimagine it. Instead of the “yeah, right…dream on” like that’s-never-going-to-happen, we want to own it as an imperative, a call to action, as it were.’
Each year Greenbelt strives to deliver a festival rich in diversity. Since its inception 50 years ago, its ethos has always been to create a space that is inclusive and representative. Great artistry, courageous activism and open-hearted belief has always been at the heart of the festival’s programming. A true trailblazer amongst UK’s festivals, Greenbelt believes in creating a diverse, intentional, all-inclusive line-up.
MUSIC & IDEAS
Be the rainbow in someone’s cloud
Coming (back) to headline Greenbelt’s main stage on Friday night is Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae. She’ll be performing (in its entirety) her utterly astonishing new album, Black Rainbows. Critically-acclaimed, it melds rock, electronica, glam, punk, jazz and Afrofuturism into a cohesive, extraordinary whole.
The music on Black Rainbows is as expansive as the breadth of the Black experience she found at the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago, which inspires and informs each track on the new album. To say Corinne was changed by her visit does not do justice to the profundity of her experience. She was transformed. “I knew when I walked through those doors that my life had changed forever,” she says.
In its fusing of multiple forms of artistry, combining protest and prayer, rage and riot grrrl energy, Black Rainbows is a genre-defying album that could have been made to be played at Greenbelt. The festival is more than excited to see Corinne return.
Great art and great music is there to be restorative, life changing; driving away the gloom, opening up hope and possibility. You only have to tune into Lauren Lavern’s BBC Radio 6 Music’s Cloudbusting to see this reflected in her daily dose of life-affirming, uplifting music choices.
As well as headlining Greenbelt’s Glade mainstage, Corinne will be appearing in conversation elsewhere during the festival to talk about her experience, and the life-changing impact it has had on her.
MUSIC & BELIEF
Slay it loud!
Hot on the stilettoed and sequined success of last year’s drag queens, Greenbelt is delighted to welcome drag legend Flamy Grant to the fields this summer. Flamy is a glorious, shame-slaying, hip-swaying, singing-songwriting drag queen and Billboard-charting artist from North Carolina. This down-to-earth diva has entertained music lovers from Los Angeles to Nashville with her funny, frank, and fabulous songs about glamour, gays and God.
It’s no accident that Flamy’s drag name is an homage to Amy Grant, the undisputed queen of 90s chart-topping pop and Christian music artist. Much of Flamy’s music centres on the queer spiritual journey, telling stories of resilience and recovery from religious trauma in a world where LGBTQ+ people are frequently ignored by, harmed in, or ejected from religious spaces.
Flamy is the first drag performer to appear on Christian music charts, with her gorgeous, soaring country-gospel single “Good Day” and her album Bible Belt Baby reaching #1 on iTunes. With a bold lip, a big lash, and a blistering voice, Flamy drags audiences to a soulful, uplifting church of her own making.
MUSIC & ACTIVISM
Celebrating the very finest in Palestinian jazz fusion
Akram Abdulfattah is a young Palestinian-American violin master, composer and producer who marries jazz with middle eastern and Indian music. His style is a rich fusion brew influenced by Hindu, Turkish, and Persian styles, reflecting the rich legacy and culture of ancient music, but with a modern 21st century feel.
In 2023, his multinational five-piece group, made up of musicians from Palestine/Sweden/Italy/Greece/and the UK, visited the UK for the first time. With a new album due for release in 2024, Greenbelt is thrilled to welcome Akram and his band this summer especially given the ongoing situation in Palestine/Israel and the festival’s longstanding commitment to platforming Palestinian artists and peace-makers.
Akram’s talent is so prodigious that he was able to overcome the many challenges of growing up with a Palestinian instrumental music field that lacked resources and infrastructure. He received national and international recognition as he formed the youngest-ever Palestinian musical quartet, won prestigious awards and took part in various international and cross-culture projects. This is shaping up to be one of the festival’s must-sees!
PERFORMING ARTS & SOCIAL JUSTICE
Unparalleled and unmatched – theatre like no other
Each year Greenbelt works hard to bring its festival-goers a programme filled with imaginative, provocative, thoughtful, and inspiring artists. It’s always looking for the festival holy grail of showing you a few things you’ve (hopefully) never seen before – or might never see anywhere else. And with CODE, Greenbelt thinks it’s found one.
Created by physical theatre company Justice in Motion, CODE is a thrilling, visceral new show that tells the story of ‘county lines’ crime. It takes place in a specially-built environment designed to look like an estate of concrete block architecture, which will be performed (twice) at the festival’s Playhouse venue.
CODE follows the story of a young person groomed by a criminal gang, who becomes caught up in the illegal drugs trade as a mule, delivering to different areas of the country. Around 1000 county lines operate in the UK, each one returning an average annual profit of just under £1 million.
The performing company features a talented group of urban sportspeople – trials bike riders, parkour athletes, skateboarders – as well as physical theatre and dance performers. All of it accompanied by a unique live soundtrack.
IDEAS
Rewiring the world’s wealth
Kate Raworth is a renegade ecological economist, committed to the rewiring of economics to make it fit for 21st century challenges. If we’re going to make the needs of everyone fit the means of the planet, we need a new economic mindset.
Fascinating and thought-provoking in equal measure, this is one session you won’t want to miss out on. Kate will be taking part in an interactive ‘We need to talk about growth’ session at the festival’s Hot House venue. She’ll be focussing on our culture of ‘growth is good’, by examining the last century’s social and ecological implications of GDP growth, and open up a live audience debate on ‘green growth vs degrowth’.
Over the past 25 years, Kate’s career has taken her from working with micro-entrepreneurs in the villages of Zanzibar to a decade as Senior Researcher at Oxfam. Her international best-selling book, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think like a 21st Century Economist, has been translated into more than 20 languages. It’s been widely influential with everyone from the UN General Assembly and Pope Francis to Extinction Rebellion.
HOW DO I GET A TICKET?
Greenbelt Festival’s pay-what-you-can ticketing model is back
Greenbelt Festival is rolling out its radical and inclusive pay-what-you-can ticketing pricing structure for a second year, where those who can pay – do – and those who can’t – have the opportunity to pay what they can. Even better, you can spread the cost with Greenbelt’s monthly installment plan, interest-free, up to July 2024.
Tier one adult weekend tickets start from just £160 for those who choose the Supported price, £202 for the festival’s Standard ticket, and then up to £244 for the pay-it-forward Supporter ticket. Tier one tickets are available until the end of April.
FESTIVAL CREDENTIALS
The first Greenbelt Festival took place in 1974 on a Suffolk farm with the words ‘If you’ve got a field, you’ve got a festival’. The Sun Newspaper reviewed the first one as ‘The Nice People’s Pop Festival’, but it was more subversive than it appeared.
Over the years Greenbelt has welcomed headline acts such as Pussy Riot, Sinead O’Connor, Kae Tempest, Estelle, Laura Mvula, Magic Numbers, Ezra Furman, and Mavis Staples to name but a few! It has seen early performances by future global artists such as Ed Sheeren, Corinne Bailey Rae, as well as the mighty U2 who played Greenbelt in 1981 when they had only released their first album.
