This is definitely a gathering with a difference.
Also Festival – the UK’s first ‘festival with ideas’ launches in Warwickshire in June from the team that transformed London’s cultural scene with its revolutionary movement for the heart and mind; Salon London.
Since 2008, Salon London has been delivering themed live events focusing on art, the sciences and psychology and have developed its format into a weekend-long open air Festival in Compton Verney, in its Capability Brown designed landscapes, from 21st-22nd June.
Co-founder and cultural curator, Helen Bagnall, said: “We’ve chosen the solstice weekend to kick off the brilliant UK festival season, with a new style festival, one with our usual big ideas, but giving the audience the time and space to interact with the speakers and their ideas in a bucolic setting.”
The sell-out success of Salon London saw the concept expand with Salon North three years ago and has proven a smash-hit with audiences across the UK seeking life-affirming nights out.
The Also Festival’s 2014 theme is ‘Speed’. It will explore how digital life affects our attention span with Digital Humanist Tom Chatfield, how to have conversations that mean something with J P Flintoff, and coping with our own ageing process with Anne Karpf. It’ll even promises to help audiences grasp the speed of the Universe with Prof David Tong.
The clever talks are matched with clever food, including a lake-side pop-up restaurant from Donostia Social Club, a Saturday night Ottoman Banquet, craft beers, a philosophy and cocktail bar, and campfire cooking.
There’s also a similar programme for the body to match the mind, rounders, crafts, a guided bike ride, MTV dancing, circus skills, and nature walks.
Interactive activities also include a festival choir led by voice coach for BBC1’s The Voice, and Salon co-founder, Juliet Russell, workshops from Craftivist Collective, origami from the UK’s master, death drawing from Art Macabre, and Jane Austen, her life in cakes from food historian Pen Vogler.
For book and movie lovers, there will be a new look at Hemingway through his wives, with the genius psycho biography from Naomi Wood, and a Festival cinema, screening Sundance Film Festival winners including Havana Marking’s Smash and Grab – a documentary that Danny Boyle is now adapting.
Helen said: “Our festival goers can also learn and try things that make their mind more open to big ideas, and we have mindfulness, we’ve got rave yoga, gong therapy, sunrise meditation, a disco bunker, a Sunday dance music in the sunshine session with house music legend Justin Robertson. All of which will pop up in 30 acres of Arcadia which is landscape that has been re-sculpted to look like heaven. With just 500 tickets available for our first festival, tickets are going to be in demand.”
The Also Festival has already featured in the Guardian’s Top 25 Festivals of 2014, and in the Wall St Journal.
Tickets start from £45 for a day pass to £190 for families of 2 adults and up to 4 children, including camping. To book visit: http://www.also-festival.com
