Statements

Trying to manage the social media presence of an organisation is tricky, as anyone who’s done it will tell you. The platforms you invest time and energy in are not your own, and you are at the mercy of their ever-changing algorithms.

When they work though – which they do often – they can be a real blessing. When they change the rules on a dime overnight – which they do often – they can be a real curse.

But when they get bought up by the world’s richest man and pumped full of the weird/wacky ideas that accompany unquestioned power and privilege, while folks professing free speech (but spouting hate speech) get welcomed back… then it’s probably time to reconsider your options (and yes we’re talking about Twitter/X).

It’s tricky because at Greenbelt our instinct is to be in the thick of things. Not to withdraw and be separate, because of some sort of purity agenda. But to engage and be present. It’s where our incarnational ‘no splits’ theology urges us to be; seeing things through one lens. Its a lens shaped by our Christian worldview: one that sees the world as one space – the good, the bad and the ugly.

In the early days of Twitter, it felt like Greenbelt had found its natural online environment. It was all about ideas, connections, conversation. We built a Twitter following in those heady, early days that felt very natural and affirming. 

Since then, Elon Musk’s commitment to so-called ‘free speech’ has basically enabled the voices of a smaller and smaller number of louder and louder, more powerful people to dominate the tone. X is no longer the platform it was, no matter how much its owner and its prime beneficiaries trumpet that it is. 

So we’re off.

Why are we telling you all this? Well, as a festival operating in a precarious market sector, to ditch engagement with 20,000 ‘followers’ overnight feels pretty… bold. If you think plenty of soul-searching hasn’t gone on over this, you’d be dead wrong.

Our instinct is to try and be ‘salt and light’ wherever we are – from festival fields to email newsletters and, of course, online. But we can’t ignore the direction the platform is headed, or the company we keep by being on there.

On its own of course, our leaving won’t make a jot of difference. But we remain committed to the idea that the cumulative actions of the many can still change the world. However slowly. Because all those actions do matter. Hence taking a few hundred words to explain our thinking (being intentional can be a real pain sometimes).

We’ll still be there until January, but then we’ll be making our X-it – before the inauguration of the US President that Musk has done so much to help get re-elected, including using his platform, privilege and algorithms on X. And our conscience (as a festival founded in ideas of belief and belonging), will be just a little bit less muddy.

In the meantime we’re going to start cross-posting on Bluesky – a public benefit corporation that feels like social media used to feel. We’re switching the bird for the butterfly, and we’ll be building our presence and following there – we’d love you to join us in the X-odus to that space.

We get that all the other social media we are present on have their issues, too. Absolutely. But we’ll continue to try and be salt and light in those spaces for as long as we can.

In the meantime, there’s lots of conversation, connection and community-building to do at our new BlueSky account. If social media’s your thing, we hope to see you there…

As always happens, sometimes things change for artists and speakers in the time between us announcing them in our early lineup and the festival coming round. There’s very little we – or they – can do about it. This year, we’re sad not to be able to welcome the following to the fields…

Co-leader of the Green Party, Carla Denyer – Carla agreed to be with us for the whole weekend a long time ago, but her world has changed somewhat since she became the new Green MP for Bristol Central.

Writer and priest Marie Elsa Bragg was due to be sharing from her wonderful book on grief, Sleeping Letters, but has had to withdraw due to health issues.

Dolly Church (from the Inclusive Gathering Birmingham team) wrote to us a few weeks ago to withdraw due to changed circumstances for them, which meant the festival was no longer manageable.

For personal reasons, we’re sad to say that Brian Eno can’t join us at the festival this year. But Brian says he’s “determined” to make it back next year… as, in his words, “Greenbelt is my favourite festival”.

And finally, we’ve had to make some last-minute changes, working together with new partners Refugees at Home, to the the Table venue programme. This is because some of the refugees and asylum seekers they had involved in the programme no longer feel safe to travel, in the light of the racist riots. We have worked with Refugees at Home to make late changes and they will all pull through to your App. But we are so, so sad about this.

It was always a possibility. After all, we’ve been inviting Daoud Nassar from the Tent of Nations just outside Bethlehem to join us at Greenbelt for years and years. But when you own and live on a hilltop farm (which has been in your family for generations) in the West Bank and you’re surrounded by illegal Israeli settlements on every side, which means settlers regularly camp out on your boundaries and break in to trash your orchards and olive groves, you’re understandably always going to be nervous about going too far from home.

The horrible reality is that while the world’s attention has rightly been focused on Gaza since 7 October, the situation in the occupied West Bank has become worse and worse. Daoud held on until the last in the hope he would be able to come, together with his family. But over the weekend, with regret, he made the decision that he really had to stay where he was. We’re gutted. But we completely understand and respect his decision. Daoud and those at the Tent of Nations will join us via livelink for our Festival Communion Gathering on Sunday, and we’re working on Palestinian guests to join us late in the day to fill in for the sessions where Daoud was taking part.

In light of the very serious allegations against Russell Brand in Channel 4’s Dispatches and in The Times in mid- September 2023 and out of respect and concern for all those who have made allegations, we have decided to remove images, videos and audio of Russell Brand from our website.

We have welcomed Jack Monroe to Greenbelt twice in recent years. With food poverty an increasingly urgent issue, we wanted to include Jack’s unique voice again in 2023.

We have, of course, kept abreast of the various developments in Jack’s life and work. Along with many others we read Simon Hattenstone’s warts-and-all interview in the Guardian at the start of the year. We’ve continued to look closely at Jack’s public event appearances (at Edinburgh, Cambridge, Hay, Stroud, on BBC 1’s Question Time, and so on).

We know that few people divide public opinion as much as she does. As Simon Hattenstone says in his article:

For many, she is a heroic anti-poverty campaigner, as evidenced by her recent awards. In October, she won the 2022 Food Hero at the Observer Food Monthly Awards, and a couple of weeks ago she was named The Grocer’s Hero of the Year. Both publications praised the way that Monroe has highlighted the fact that food inflation disproportionately affects the poor. As for her critics, they say she exaggerates her influence, makes claims she cannot back up, and is not transparent about money.

Our eyes are open to all this. But the suggestions made that we need to ‘protect’ Greenbelters’ from Jack – as if she poses a risk or a threat to them – is one we do not buy.

Some of the critique we have received has been about why we should give Jack a platform when there are others (living in poverty) better able to and more deserving to speak into the (food) poverty debate. This, we really hear. Jack’s is not the only or most important voice and presence in this critical area of our life together. Far from it.

That’s why we are working closely with Trussell Trust (and Church Action on Poverty, Christians Against Poverty and Citizens UK) to welcome people with lived experience of poverty to the festival in greater numbers this year. Some of them will be partnering with Trussell Trust to host our brand new venue called The Living Room, leading sessions in that venue over the weekend. We see this participation and sharing as central to our focus on UK poverty at the festival this year.

Ultimately, we do have a track record with Jack. We know her and she knows us. Like all of us, she has made mistakes. Like all of us, she deserves a chance to do better. We look forward to welcoming her back to the festival.

Mon 3 July 2023

Andy Hunter, The Prayer
Unfortunately, for medical reasons, Andy Hunter is no longer able to attend Greenbelt 2023. 

22 August 2023

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Carmody Grey
For unexpected personal reasons, Carmody is sadly unable to attend Greenbelt this year as planned. She wishes the Greenbelt Festival all the very best and hopes she’ll be able to join you another year.

Adjoa Andoh
For personal reasons, Adjoa has decided to take a step back from public appearances for the foreseeable future. She wishes the Greenbelt Festival all the very best and hopes she’ll be able to join you on another occasion.

27 June 2023

Following the publication on 11 May 2023 of the Church of England’s report into the lessons and learning from historic abuse perpetrated in Bradford, and the immediate responses made by former archbishop of York, John Sentamu, we have taken the decision to withdraw our invitation for him to speak at the festival this summer.

While John Sentamu is challenging the findings of the report (his initial responses have been reported by The Telegraph, The Guardian, the Church Times and other press publications), we feel it would be wrong to give him any sort of platform. He was coming to us in his role as Chair of our partner Christian Aid, and we have informed them about our decision.

We have made our decision because we are committed to building and holding as safe a space as we can at Greenbelt. We are conscious of the many people over the years who have suffered abuse and who have then not been listened to by the institutions involved. Greenbelt has, for all its history, sought to be a space where people can find various kinds of refuge, including from the institutional church.

Tue 30 May 2023

When we released our 2022 festival lineup back in March, a few of you raised concerns in response to some of the names on this year’s bill. We think each of the speakers and artists on the bill have interesting and pertinent things to say and share in our Greenbelt space, but we promised you clarity about exactly what it is that they’re being invited to speak on. Here it is.

Frances Crook
Treehouse, Saturday
Prison is not the solution; it’s the problem
We have a justice system based on two-thousand-year-old principles of proportional revenge. It hasn’t worked and it’s not fair. It is time to abolish prisons and develop a new system of responding to social and personal conflict and misbehaviour.

As CEO of the Howard League for Penal Reform from 1986 to 2021, Frances Crook spent 25 years researching and raising concerns about the penal system

Onjali Raúf
Treehouse, Sunday
Children, Activism and our Hope on the Horizon
How childhood experiences of activism and storytelling put Onjali Q Raúf on the road to writing the modern classic, The Boy At the Back of the Class, and her first non-fiction guide for children, Hope on the Horizon.

Onjali Q Raúf is a women’s and refugee human rights activist and a multi award-winning children’s author. She will be in conversation with former chair of Greenbelt and now Head of Mission at the Methodist Church, Jude Levermore

Richard Dawkins
Glade mainstage, Monday
Richard Dawkins, in conversation
Richard Dawkins’ work on evolutionary biology saw him voted the world’s top thinker in Prospect magazine’s poll in 2013. He is world-renowned for a string of best-selling books, spanning from 1976’s ‘The Selfish Gene’, through ‘The God Delusion’ and his most recent ‘Flights of Fancy’. He is also widely regarded as one of the strongest proponents of so-called New Atheism. Richard will be in conversation with priest, journalist, broadcaster, philosophy lecturer, and popular Greenbelt speaker, Giles Fraser.

Expect a conversation that is surprising, respectful and wide-ranging. One in which we explore Richard’s life, asking about his sense of ‘otherness’, the human condition (of interdependence), his seemingly, strangely, almost Anglican aesthetic, his sense of awe and wonder. In other words, expect to be surprised; even if to disagree.

Monday 1st August 2022

Withdrawal of the ‘A is For Autism’ session from Greenbelt Festival 2019

Following our earlier apology on Twitter for offence caused in the planning, framing, billing and wording of the ‘A is For Autism’ session at Greenbelt Festival 2019, we have decided to pull it altogether from this year’s programme.

We have done this having listened and realised that we failed fundamentally to consult with or involve the autistic community in the making of it. We clearly have lessons to learn. And we will learn them.

In the meantime, we apologise again for offence caused and we commit to doing better in the future – with the support and involvement of the autistic community. We feel like we’re listening to and talking with the right people to help us do that. And we’re sorry we didn’t do that earlier.

6.30pm, Wednesday 14th August, 2019