As well as the stunning livestream content in the Canopy and Pagoda ‘venues’ across the day, there’s loads more to dig into on Greenbelt’s Wild at Home digital day. And, whereas the main venue livestream content will be available to watch again, on-demand, during September, these other, smaller (Zoom-style) sessions and spaces will only be there for you to enjoy on the day itself. So make sure you don’t miss out.
Here’s what to look out for…
What better way to start the day than with your very own parkrun-inspired 5k – wherever you are. For the last few years, we’ve hosted our very own greenbeltrun and it’s proved incredibly popular. So, even though we can’t run en-masse this year, don your greenbeltrun tee-shirt and run, walk or jog 5k with your family, your bubble or just your music. When you’re done, take a selfie and post it to socials with the hashtag #GBWildAtHome and then login to the Wild at Home portal to join us for an after-run social at 10am where we are delighted to be joined by the man who leads parkrun’s global operations, Tom Williams and Michele Glassup, who organises parkrun inside HM Prison Feltham. There will be awards (and possibly prizes) for:
- Furthest location from Boughton House
- Most improved time on 2019
- Best dressed runner
- Best route map (send us a screenshot from your running app, inspiration here)
- Good Samaritan (if your run was slowed by stopping to help someone)
CHILDREN’S AND FAMILY CONTENT ON YOUTUBE
All day long, over on our free-to-access Youtube channel, we’ll bundle up a whole bunch of great all-age content to dig into – from hands-on workshops to shows. These will feature the best of our summer-long Wild At Home all-age livestreams, plus some brand new vids made just for the festival weekend.
Including: Professor Pumpernickel, Bhangra Dance, Sew Far Sew Good, Kitchen Dancing, Darn It workshops and Thomas Trilby’s Family Show. So, for all those missing what Make and Create and Ta-Dah! have to offer onsite, this is what you’ve been looking for!
GREENBELT CINEMA
We may not have had a cinema venue onsite for the last few years, but Wild at Home will include a dedicated space screening great film content on-demand for you to enjoy across the day.
Gaza
Beyond the reach of television news reports, this beautifully shot, award-winning film reveals a world rich with eloquent and resilient characters. Made by Garry Keane and Andrew Mc Connell, Gaza is a German-Irish-Canadian co-production that takes an uncommon look at life inside the Strip. In this uplifting film, we unfold a beautiful portrait of everyday Gazans, leading meaningful lives beyond the rubble of perennial conflict. Free of the cliché of news reportage, the film reveals a place of beauty amidst devastation, through the lives of its extraordinary people.
Age Recommendation: 15+ contains graphic imagery
The Five Seasons: The gardens of Piet Oudolf
An immersive and meditative documentary that reveals how the revolutionary landscape designer, Piet Oudolf, upends our conventional notions of nature, public space, and, ultimately, beauty itself. Perfect viewing for those of us who have rediscovered the great outdoors or even their own gardens as spaces of solace and refuge in these strange times.
“For me, garden design isn’t just about plants, it is about emotion, atmosphere, a sense of contemplation. You try to move people with what you do. You look at this, and it goes deeper than what you see. It reminds you of something in the genes — nature, or the longing for nature.”
Piet Oudolf
Piet Oudolf has radically redefined what gardens can be. As Rick Darke, the famous botanist, says to Piet in the film, “your work teaches us to see what what we have been unable to see.”
Greenbelt at 40
At 70 minutes, this documentary, made for the festival’s 40th anniversary in 2013, is rich with rare archive and great music from across the festival’s first four decades, including key interviews with the people who started Greenbelt and those who have guided it across the years. It retells the highs and lows of the story from its humble beginnings in a field in Suffolk in 1974, weaving around its long and intriguing history of grappling with the intertwining of arts, faith and justice from the very beginning.
Plus a selection of captioned talks from last year’s festival
Including Miatta Fahnbulleh on Stepping Stones to a New Economy, Mike Berners Lee on No Planet B, Mel Strickland (of the Stansted 15) on Activism in the Hostile Environment, Danny Dorling on What So Funny About Brexit?, Hannah Critchlow (in conversation with Chris Powell) on The Science of Fate, Rupert Shortt on Does Religion Do More Harm Than Good?, Vicky Walker on Why Do Christians Idolise the Traditional Family?, and Kumi Naidoo on Can Civil Disobedience Change The World?
THE FOUNDRY
The perfect venue for those smaller, deeper, more participatory and intimate conversations and gatherings, make sure you dig into The Foundry on the day. It will feature…
Performance – My Heart Goes Zoom, presented by Siobhan O’Loughlin
2.00pm – Part 1: Falling in Love / 5.30pm – Part 2: Loving my Heart
Written during lockdown, this performance tells the story of Siobhan, an extroverted film student whose classes have been transferred online during COVID-19. Instead of being moved by documentary film theory, she finds herself moved, instead, by coagulations of pixels with synchronized audio–that is, a particular fellow classmate. Join her for this two-part, one-hour-long-each, interactive romantic comedy starring YOU – as Siobhan navigates genuine human connection through a screen.
Max. capacity: 75 (first-come-first-served for places)
You need to attend both sessions
Age recommendation: 13+
Siobhan O’Loughlin is a Brooklyn-based performance artist, filmmaker, and activist. She is the recipient of The New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Solo Performance, a grant recipient of the Network of Ensemble Theatres, and a fellow at Guild Hall of East Hampton.
After-panel discussions
Just 15 minutes after each main panel (time to order books by the speakers, grab a drink and take a comfort break), hop on over into a smaller round table discussions in the Foundry to continue the conversation with other Greenbelters. These after-show sessions will most often be hosted by friends of the festival, like Christian Aid (climate change), Trussell Trust (food poverty), Amos Trust (Palestine justice), and In Place Of War (Creativity Beats Covid).
Understanding Mental Health
12.15 and 3.45pm
Humans are the most complex living beings and have the most complex set of needs. In this webinar presentation we will explore these emotional needs and the emotional resources that we all possess. By knowing what these needs and resources are then we can take effective action for change in our lives.
Steve Peck is a Human Givens psychotherapist and Mental Health and Safety trainer for MHS Training.
JESUS ARMS
It sure wouldn’t be Greenbelt without The Jesus Arms! So make sure you spend at least some of your day there. As well as open tables to join and the main bar itself to meet in all day, there will be some programmed sessions in the Jesus Arms, too.
Christian Connection social meet-up
11.30am
Start your day by making connections – old and new. What better way if you’ve logged in on your own to make a friend to share the day with.
SCM Student meet-up
1.00pm
In these strangest of times, especially for the younger generation, the Student Christian Movement invite all uni students and prospective students to join them for a social get-together.
The Old Plough Folk Club
2.30pm
The classic Greenbelt participatory session, hosted by longterm Greenbelters Nicky Coates and Chris Lawley. Bring a song, a poem, a dance. Most importantly, bring yourself for the most encouraging and welcoming of open mics you’re likely to find.
The Parish Inquisition
4.30pm
No one expects… a pub quiz where all the questions have to to with church history. Hosted for us by the inimitable Steve Tomkins, this pub quiz with a difference will test you on all things ecclesiastical – the good, the bad and the ugly.
Tenx9 – storytelling
6.00pm
This time, on the theme of ‘lockdown‘, the delicious Padraig O’Tuama is looking for a handful of people to recount their short stories to a wrapt audience. To submit, go to www.tenx9.com/gb2020. We are looking for stories on the theme (not essays, reflections, memoirs, call-to-actions-for-vulnerable-causes, or manifestos – just stories, pure and simple).
Beer and Hymns
8.30pm
Beer and Hymns has become something of an institution. In a good way. Now, we can’t do a live singalong for all of us (Zoom and internet latency means that while some of us would be belting out our Hallelujah chorus others would just be starting the verse). So, instead, the wonderful Beer and Hymns team have scoured the web and put together a package of Beer and Hymns moments from over the years (a ‘Best Of’, if you will), for you to stream and sing along too. See if you can spot yourselves. Raise a glass and your voices.
TURNAROUND VJ CONTENT
Meanwhile, in the main livestream venues – and especially in The Canopy, where we’re keen to keep the buzz as buzzy as possible all day! – we’ll be surprising you in the turnaround between acts with hellos and messages of support from familiar Greenbelt faces as well as spinning in some classic archive performance material from way back in the Castle Ashby and Deene Park days. We may not have a resident Greenbelt DJ to keep you glued to the stage, but we hope that the bits of video we mix in will keep you smiling and ‘strangely warmed’.