So, here’s another crop of great names for this year’s Greenbelt Festival programme – as eclectic and wide-ranging as you might have come to expect from us. After all, when you’re exploring a theme like The Common Good, there’s so much ground to cover, so much human experience to connect with.
These names add to those announced a month ago, but they do not complete the bill by any means. There is much more to come yet! We’ll be making more announcements as we head towards our Tier One, end-of-April discount ticket deadline – including children’s and family programming.
Ideas
Jack Monroe – food poverty campaigner, journalist and advisor to Ken Loach on his film I, Daniel Blake, Jack first started blogging A Girl Called Jack in 2012 in response to a local councillor who claimed that ‘druggies, drunks and single mums are ruining the High Street.’
Charles Handy – with a lifetime of wisdom about people and organisations, and why it’s never too late to begin a new adventure (in fact, our lives might just depend on it) on the ‘Second Curve’.
Jendella Benson – photographer, writer and filmmaker, writing on issues of faith, race, identity, feminism and the arts for Huffington Post, The Guardian, BuzzFeed, MumsNet and Media Diversified.
Anna Rowlands – Catholic political theologian from Durham University on community organising and about how Catholic Social Teaching is all about The Common Good.
Greg Garrett – quirky theologian from the Baylor University in the States on zombies, the apocalypse and everything in between.
Literature
Greenbelt friend and poet Anthony Wilson has curated a bill for us featuring four great women poets who are connecting their art and practice with common good concerns.
Exploring subjects as diverse as the murder of Stephen Lawrence and melting Arctic ice, these poets extract new meaning from ancient mythologies of wonder and loss. This is unmissable ‘poetry of earth’. With Josephine Corcoran, Sasha Dugdale, Nancy Campbell and Rebecca Goss.
Music
Hailing from Jordan and the West Bank, 47Soul are making waves across the world with what they describe as their ShamStep music. An infectious live act, their name evokes the connection they long to make back to 1947, when their Palestinian homeland was free and home to their ancestors.
Based in Belgium, La Chiva Gantiva fuse Latino and African beats to create a global party sound that will have Greenbelt dancing and jumping. This is no chin-stroking, standing still music. This is dance time. Perfect for the end of a Greenbelt day, it’s time to let your hair down and move to the rhythm.
After his enchanting set last year, the beautiful singer songwriter Richard Navarro is back with a participative project, Let The People Sing. Rehearsing a scratch choir of festival-goers in the morning, Richard will then perform with that choir in the afternoon on our Glade mainstage.
Not just because her set was hit by our power outage in the lightening storm of 2016, but also because we think Mahalia is a supreme talent and set for big, big things, we’ve invited her back to play an interrupted gig for us this year. Catch her before her star goes supernova.
Clean Cut Kid are a band who’s time as come. Melding classic melodies with a musical inventiveness and adventurousness, they explore the rawness of the human condition, making intelligent and contemporary pop that is as beautiful and fragile and as it is raw and raucous.
Nick Parker used to gig at the festival way back in the day with his first band Why?, but now he’s back with his band The False Alarms to re-connect with the festival and to remind us just what great and instant tunes he pens and what a great time can be had by all those tuning in.
Jasper In The Company of Others bely their youthfulness in making fast-paced and nuanced folk-rock music with a contemporary pop edge that is sure to have Greenbelters up and dancing this August.
Samuel Jack is an up-and-coming singers-songwriter who has won fans including Graham Norton and is now on support with Nell Bryden.
Performing Arts
Random Acts of Kindness presented by Them Two Dance will see a tandem bicycle make its way around the site, with its two riders encouraging all of us to perform more Random Acts of Kindness, to be kind and generous. And to help them out if they get a puncture!
Lords of Strut – an Irish comedy double act, combining character comedy, dance, and acrobatics as their deluded alter egos, Famous Seamus and Sean-tastic.
Mary Bijou & Social Club is a Cardiff based-collective creating unique and challenging circus cabaret. Founded in 2010, theirs is a philosophy of audience inclusion and sometimes collusion, taking their audiences down the rabbit hole of possibilities.
Happy Hour presented by Tmesis Theatre Company is a poignant, fast paced comedy exploring our 21st century obsession with happiness and success, combining the company’s trademark physicality with humour and music.
Worship & Spirituality
The Nine Beats Global Collective will be in residence all festival. Featuring the Rev Vince Anderson, soul singer, pianist and maker of Dirty Gospel music, from New York City; Heatherlyn from the mid-West, who uses her storytelling music with communities seeking to build peace; author, speaker, activist Mark Scandrette; coach, creator, and consultant Rozella Haydée White; chaplain and blogger Eric Wilson; and Mikael R Andreasen, winner of the ‘Best Composer’ in Denmark’s prestigious Stefpeulven Awards.
Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir from London join us with a gospel set for The Common Good, complete with reflections and commentary from Lucy Winkett, with whom they often collaborate for pieces for radio and Lucy’s monthly gospel services at St James’ Piccadilly.
Pictured top: Jack Monroe
For the full lineup so far, visit our lines pages and browse all together or by genre.
More programming will be announced throughout April.