THIS 12 months’s Greenbelt Festival will include a “No Fly Zone”: an area that each speakers can join by online video call, and anyone unable to attend in person can log in to, to get “the Greenbelt experience”.
Greenbelt’s Creative Director, Paul Northup, said: “We’re thrilled to give you the chance to platform writers and speakers from world wide at Greenbelt this 12 months with no need to fly all of them to the fields — helping our perspective to stay global, similtaneously not costing the earth. We’re also proud to give you the chance to supply a taste of the festival online to all those unable to be with us in person. We hope that the programme we’ve put together enables those online to feel genuinely a part of the community and its concerns over the weekend.”
Each day, the poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama will host a live show from the No Fly Zone within the form of his podcast Poetry Unbound (Features, 28 March). Martyn Joseph may have a songwriter circle show with international guests and live performers. The slam-poetry champion Harry Baker may have a day by day slot, and the novelists Marilynne Robinson and Tim Winton, and the philosopher and environmental activist Dougald Hine, from Sweden, will even be appearing.
Another speaker will likely be Daoud Nassar, the director of the Tent of Nations, a Christian family farm among the many Bethlehem hills within the West Bank surrounded by five Israeli settlements. In spite of the hostility that they experience, Mr Nassar said that he desired to impart a message of hope and that he was looking forward to taking advantage of the No Fly Zone. “This technology is a blessing,” he said. “It’s making it easier, saving resources, and offers us the chance to achieve out to people and ask them to wish for us.”
Greenbelt takes place at Boughton House, in Northamptonshire, 21-24 August. Online access to the No Fly Zone venue costs £35 all through the festival. greenbelt.org.uk
