greenbelt 25 1998 [ten years late]

now for some emerging church history.

when greenbelt festival hit 25 in 1998, it planned to reinvent itself [split into two festivals, change sites and intentions]. so i decided to use my new camera to record the festival, in case it was the last of its kind. indeed, the grace service on the monday night was called 'the last supper', in case it was the last alt worship service at greenbelt. and had the festival ended there yours truly might have been the last 'act' ever at greenbelt, leading a meditation at 1.30-2am tuesday morning [the john 21 meditation in 'alternative worship', written for the slot - the last line was originally 'the world after greenbelt']

of course it didn't end there, but i've never photographed the festival in general since, feeling that i'd done it. but i discovered, late last year, that i'd never actually scanned more than a handful of the photos - just a few of the epicentre ones for small fire. so here, ten years late, is greenbelt 25 at deene park, featuring the legendary epicentre arts cafe.

a note on the venue: deene park was a country house estate, with a natural bowl in the land. the main stage and backstage were in the bottom of the bowl, with everything else arranged along a circular path around the edge of the bowl. this meant that whichever way you went you would always come back to where you started, having met along the way all the people you knew who weren't in the outfield at their tents. finding people was so much easier. everything was under canvas - so there was nowhere warm when it was cold or cool when it was hot, and the noise from the dance tent wrecked all attempts at quiet ambience, silent prayer, meditation. and marquees can get pretty muddy inside, which isn't good for electrics either. after the torrential rain and mudbath of 1997, and the not much better weather of 1998 [see photos], the move to cheltenham racecourse was partly about making sure that at least some of the main site and venues were on concrete or indoors. it took greenbelt 7 or 8 years to recover from the financial damage of the bad weather in 97/98.

Comments

[Kester]

These are LEGENDARY Steve. Love it. Hope you don't mind - have let the powers that be know the link to the Flickr page.

Some great people spots in the backgrounds... Jon Rag and Sooz are in there for sure!