ALL WEEKEND
Between 10am and 6pm (11am on Sun)
Starting at The Shelter
The Jamaican Bible Remix (JBR) Audio Walk
Curated by Robert Beckford and Tony Bean 5am records
Theologian Robert Beckford and music producer Tony Bean created the Jamaican Bible Remix using the words of the patois in the Jamaican New Testament to present a radical vision of the gospel with justice, reconciliation and restoration at its heart – using beats, vocals, testimony and the words of the New Testament. There is nothing like it. You can’t buy it as a download.
But you can walk the remix at Greenbelt this year and experience it for yourself.
This year, Greenbelt introduces its first ever ‘audio walk’. Audio walks are experienced using a downloadable app (Echoesxyz) on your mobile phone (headset recommended), which enables you to move through a public space and listen in. The spoken word is triggered in a series of audio zones as you enter them. Each zone (or bubble) has audio, an image and some text and you use the map on the screen to move from one zone to the next.
Attention is one of the scarcest commodities in our world. But when you are on an audio walk you are not easily distracted by anything else. This is rare. With so many choices at the festival, the chance to focus can be valuable and calming.
The Echoesxyz app is free to download and available for Apple or Android. Once downloaded, just search the Jamaican Bible Remix (JBR) walk. Come to The Shelter venue anytime over the weekend – between 10am and 6pm – to read the instructions there about how to engage with and enjoy the audio walk. We’ll use the mowed pathways through the wildflower meadow in front of Boughton House as the setting for the audio walk.
And, for when you get home, the app will also show you walks in all sorts of other places. John Griffiths (the kindly curator of this JBR Walk for us) will also be around over the weekend to provide advice if you are inspired to take a bit of Greenbelt home with you and set up your own audio walk where you live. Walks can be situated – for free* – anywhere on the planet from your computer by logging into echoesxyz.com. You could use your own material to set up a space which is discoverable at any time.
*As long as you are not monetising the walk