'The interfaith programme is particularly strong this year, building on last year’s appearances by Ibrahim Hewitt and Mona Siddiqi with a particular focus on promoting Christian-Islamic relations.'

Philip Purser-Hallard, surefish's Greenbelt blogger, reflects on his first 24 hours at the 2008 festival

Well, here we all are again. For the fourth year running, I’ll be recording my personal experience of the Greenbelt Festival in blogatory form for Surefish. 

This year’s festival has had a bit of a slow starter, as I spent most of yesterday (along with my wife Beatrice and several volunteers) assisting in the construction of Bea’s sculpture A Quantum of Sol (Rising Sun) – now finally erect, and due to be finished by the end of today. 

(If you’re looking for it in the Centre Course area, though, be aware that in this respect the programme lies: it’s actually just to one side of the Arena, near the two oddly-shaped and -coloured sculptures-cum-children’s-play-objects apparently called ‘podules’. 

Taking a quick look just now I found a prominent Christian comics writer and his family picnicking next to it, but they’re presumably not a permanent landmark. 

Look out for more about A Quantum of Sol (Rising Sun) on the Surefish site over the next few days. 

So what was happening while I was otherwise occupied?  The events I was sorry to miss included a debate on non-violence in ‘The Kitchen’ (the new venue, as the programme explains, for ‘cooking up ideas’), and the increasingly iconic alt-worship group Ikon leading a workshop entitled ‘Lessons in Evandalism’ (sic). 

Mind you, they would have clashed with each other. 

Difficulty

This is always the difficulty with Greenbelt. There’s sufficient stuff taking place at any given moment, under a dozen different headings, that you could spend the entire weekend in structured activity apart from a few hours’ sleep each night. 

This year there’d be even fewer of those, given the 6am dawn worship sessions accompanying the solar theme. 

Unfortunately, anything you feel you really can’t possibly miss is guaranteed to clash with something else you feel you really can’t miss. 

This year I’m taking the view that, although there are plenty of things I’d like to do, there’s nothing so important that I can’t miss it in favour of sitting down with a coffee or a beer, and preferably a friend or two. 

It’s lucky I’m taking a laid-back view, because today’s been rather frustrating.  (Just now, for instance, we had to evacuate the Press Office for half an hour due to a fire alarm. Normal service is currently being resumed…)

Earlier this afternoon I was hoping to get to a session hosted by St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace on the influence of Hinduism and Buddhism on Christianity, ‘The Marriage of East and West’. 

Interfaith

The interfaith programme is particularly strong this year, building on last year’s appearances by Ibrahim Hewitt and Mona Siddiqi with a particular focus on promoting Christian-Islamic relations. 

I’m delighted to see this – intelligent dialogue between Christians and believers of other faiths is an increasingly vital imperative in the modern world, and exactly the kind of movement Greenbelt should be at the forefront of. 

Unfortunately the venue for this specific session, ‘Ethel’s Tent’, was a tiny one.  It hadn’t the capacity for the audience who wanted to be inside, and unusually for a talks venue, the speakers were completely inaudible from outside the tent. 

I’m hoping to get into ‘An Introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita’ at the same venue later this afternoon, but in the meantime on the interfaith front, I have to award Greenbelt rather better marks for effort than for planning. 

My plans for tonight involve comedy, beer and possibly worship of some description. I’ll report back tomorrow and let you know. 

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