Space To Breathe is one of Greenbelt’s new Associates at this year’s festival. Their founder Andy Freeman explains their vision for the worship venue and content they’ll be bringing us.
Greenbelt feels like a natural home for Space to Breathe. We started life as a Sheffield-based community interest company just over a year ago – aiming to promote well-being and deep living through spirituality. We were struck by the amazing creativity and imagination of so many spiritual traditions and we asked ourselves: why can’t we make these available in easy and understandable ways to normal people in normal settings? And so we did … and Space to Breathe began.
As we approach this year’s festival we are committing to bringing a flavour of Space to Breathe to the event and to creating some spaces and experiences that make sense to the many people who are spiritual but don’t always feel that comfortable in their local church.
Here, we’d like to tell you about one just one of these spaces …
Set across the lake, you’ll be able to find the Chapel – a venue which will provide a reflective space amongst all the hustle and bustle of festival life. It’ll be a space for your soul, with imaginative installations that you can explore, as well as hosting spaces to sit and be still.
We are already working with poets and artists from the UK and around the world to create original material for this venue. Talitha from Australia, Chris and Michaela from Scotland, Jenny from Canada, and Steve from Bournemouth are just some of our creative team working on the Chapel space.
Our aim is to provide a space that helps you make sense of life – its challenges, transitions, injustices, joys and pains. Expect beautiful words, images, creative and interactive ways of reflecting, and, most of all, a space to find space.
If the weather is good we will spill out onto the grass with outdoor interactive meditations, green space to reflect in and a whole host of impromptu opportunities to reflect and meditate together. We hope it’ll become a place to gather and make sense of the festival experience as it happens.
Then, throughout the weekend we hope Space to Breathe can provide some fun, non-religious and imaginative happenings as we celebrate Acts of the Imagination together. You’ll find our daily reflections ‘The Adjacent Possible’ happening in Shelter each afternoon. We are also thrilled to bring Proost back to the festival in ‘Proost Presents …’ – a showcase of the best of Alt. Worship, spoken word and ambient music/art from the Proost stable, which is now part of Space to Breathe.
It’s so exciting to be part of the festival this year. It’s challenged us as we grow as a business but also we hope we can bring some new perspectives and ideas to our favourite summer festival.
Come and find us on site, we’d love to meet you.