• WOW Awards Part 1: are for festival food
• WOW Awards Part 2: are for music and everything else.

The WOW Awards 2011 Part 1: Food

Winner of the 2011 Best Festival Cafe award is…

The Home-grown Hangout cafe (Sunrise and Secret Garden Party).

One of their aims is to bring food fresh from their allotments to the festivals. My favourite festival café. The most friendly welcome. The best breakfast: a good variety of dishes with excellent veggie sausages and a very flexible range of choices. The most easy-going (for example a guy took up large cushion for several hours sleeping without anyone disturbing him, just working round him). A place for interesting conversations. Indeed, in my opinion, the best way to spend the morning at any festival. The cafe also won my disabled friendly award. One of the team always offered to help me, and there was also a good variety of seating to suit all needs. Congratulations to Niklas and his wonderful team, who really understand what makes a great café. I hope to see them at all the festivals I go to next year.

Best ‘Full Board’ award (i.e. a range of food at different times of the day)

Winner: Buddhafield café (Glastonbury, Green Gathering, OffGrid)

They served a tasty full veggie breakfast and a good range of options at all times of the day. Special mention must go to their hearty lentil soup and the walnut lasagne which I crossed a whole festival site for.

Best Sunday (veggie) Roast award

Winner: Chai Shop Organic at Croissant Neuf Summer Party (so good I tried to eat two!)

Runner-up: Queen Delilah’s (Glastonbury)

Runner-up: Buddhafield café at Glastonbury, Green Gathering, Off Grid.

Best Healthy Smoothie award

Winner: the Raw Food Cafe at Sunrise Off Grid. Also impressive was Pete’s great enthusiasm about the food, encouraging people to taste it and try small samples.

Best Afternoon Tea award

Winner: Kate’s Kitchen (at Sunrise). Delicious cakes and perfectly brewed tea and coffee served on beautiful crockery by a delightful team.

Runner Up: Tea dance refreshments at Croissant Neuf

Best Cheese on Toast award

(There was a period in my festival summer when all I wanted to eat was cheese on toast: hence this award)

Winner: Weirdigans at Green Gathering, a delightful café, which I’d somehow missed at previous festivals, and which also provided me with the most interesting encounters and conversation.

Runner-up: Tea And Toast stall at Secret Garden Party, perfectly positioned, friendly and helpful. Tables and chairs made this a disabled-friendly spot too.

Best “Champagne” Cocktail award

Winner: Baby Sam’s cocktail bar at Croissant Neuf. Tasty and zingy drink, and a table with flowers to sit at to sip at.

Best Crêpe award

Winner: The Forestiere (mushrooms in a cream and tarragon sauce with extra mature cheddar) from ‘Crepe, Monsieur?’ at Green Peaks Festival, which also won the Best Banter between Staff award.

Best Salad Platter award

Winner: Leon’s at Glastonbury. Love the food, hate the location. Solution: I take a sealable plastic food box, tip the salad in and eat it where I like. Or I use his vegetarian recipe books.

Best Cafe Music award

Winner: Buddhafield café The team have an eclectic set of playlists to share.

Special Award:
The stylish and quirky Kill Or Cure area, run by the delightful witches. A warm welcome, a pot of tea or perhaps a glass of sloe gin, an in-depth health consultation, and the chance to buy one of their marvellous potions and ointments. Or you might catch a story or a fascinating workshop. This year I enjoyed their generous hospitality at Glastonbury, Croissant Neuf, and Sunrise Off Grid.

Special Award:
Fayre’s Fair at Glastonbury for their immediate and effective response to my arrival, near to fainting, after a long and difficult trek across the site through the gloomy mud. They sat me down and brought me breakfast. Many thanks. The café is run by volunteers in aid of the Ringwood Waldorf School.

Special Award for the most generous and versatile use of a beautifully decorated space:
Creative Intentions cafe at Green Peaks Festival. It generously hosted a speakers forum, open mic sessions, a stall in aid of the Pegasus Childrens Trust and a fire circle. Thanks to Paula Kershaw and the rest of the team.

Special Insomniac Award:
The 24 hour curry stall at Green Gathering. It was such a great comfort knowing that I was only ever 5 minutes away from a plate of dahl…

The WOW Awards 2011 – Part 2

Best Performance Music Award:

Only Joe at Chai Wallahs, Secret Garden Party.
This 9 piece Reggae band range from “deep bass driven Steppas to up-beat Roots Reggae and classic Ska Riddims” (they say). “A positive message together with a non-stop, music-to-move-you mission” for sure; just the opening notes of ‘The Big Sound’ and ‘Live As One’ would be enough to draw me across a festival site. This time, though, I was ready half an hour early, and stayed right at the front for the whole set. A top festival moment was when Zico, the talented vocalist, remembered me from last year (we’d chatted over late night chips) and gave me a hug.

Special Award to:

Seize The Day
Not just for their consistently brilliant live performances; not just for their consistently radical politics; not just for songs which rouse and inspire us; for all these as well as for ‘walking the walk’ and firing us up for positive change. My “summer wouldn’t be complete without seeing them live” band.

Best Performance Award:

Drama‘La Boîte Noire’ by Bootworks Theatre at Glastonbury.
A 40’s film noir influenced performance by 4 characters, each in a ‘Red Box’ Stunning. Gripping, even outdoors in the middle of a muddy field!

Best Performance Award:

Multi-sensory kinetic theatre. Electric Spectacle by 85A collective at Secret Garden Party. Into a strange haunting space where musical automata perform their weird opera.

Best interactive comedy Award:

The Horse Box at Glastonbury.
A small group of punters are invited into – yes – a horse box where they meet an aristocrat and her ‘assistant’….

Best Performance at Spirit of ’71 stage Award (Glastonbury):

The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.
I’d thought he was a one-hit wonder, even at the time, but his set was a revelation. The energy; the stamina; the costumes; the dancing; the flirting; the strong voice: impressive in a performer of any age, but a man in his 70th year? Wow! There was a wide range of great songs; we were looking forward to ‘Fire’ and we were not disappointed. A great showman; a great show. Edgar Broughton: sounding better than ever

Best group singing Award:

Bhajans with Pete and Pam at Rainbow Superspirit.
A deeply heart-opening experience.

One Perfect Number Awards:

• Lamb: ‘Wise Enough’ (Sunrise)
• Pat Orchard: ‘The Singing Grass’ (Glastonbury)
• Lost Padres: ‘Your Love is Taking Me Higher’ Acoustic Space, Healing Field, Glastonbury.
  A young woman was sitting at the piano on one corner of the Healing Field at Glastonbury on Sunday evening. We asked her if she’d play something for us, and she sang a beautiful song which really moved us. She said she was still in the process of composing it, but it seemed perfect to us… (If she reads this, do get in touch; we’d love to hear the song again)

“Gotta Dance!” awards:

Best Small Stages Award:

Sangers at Off Grid.
Built at the roadside and horse-drawn, this stage was great to visit at any time, but came into its own late at night. The MC gave a powerful political speech at the opening, and combined this passion with aggressive rants and never-ending jokes. The music, starting with David Sanger himself, was always entertaining, sometimes brilliant.

The Acoustic Music Space Award at Glastonbury:

A mixture of workshops and performances, the atmosphere relaxed and full of harmony. Highspots this year included a gong meditation by Stefan Cartright and dancing to Lost Padres.

The Impulse Buy I’m So Glad I Bought award:

Tom McNair’s Criminal Justice CD, which I bought, completely on impulse, at the market at Rainbow 2000 Superspirit camp. I’d never heard him play, but the young person who sold it to me assured me: “My dad’s really good.” How true! My favourite track? ‘I’m Coming Home’.

Most thought-provoking, inspiring speakers Awards:

• Theo Simon: The Heart of Activism (Sunrise) & The Luddites (Off Grid).
• Brigit Strawbridge: The Importance of Bees, at Glastonbury
• Gregory Sams: ‘Universal Consciousness’, at Secret Garden Party (new book: ‘Sun of gOd’ “The Sun is smarter than we think”.
• Mike Grenville: Transition is Now – but How? (Sunrise, Green Gathering, Off Grid)
• Rob Hopkins: The Transition Movement (Off Grid)
• Tim (Mac) McCartney: The Children’s Fire (Off Grid)
• Nicola Peel on her work on the Amazon (Off Grid)
• Charlie Veitch: a 12 minute talk at the Stiglitz Sessions, Secret Garden Party
• Chris Church: 40 years of green campaigning at Green Gathering
• Nick Jukes (International Campaign for Humane Education):Towards Deep Sustainability; workshop at Green Gathering

Best Panel Discussions Award:

• The Green Festival Movement: at Green Gathering.
• Smallholdings: at Off Grid.
• Resilience: at Off Grid.

Best Installations Award:

Sonic Forest at Glastonbury.
In a sea of mud we co-create a beautiful soundscape.

Most Helpful Stewards Award:

• Fiona Ingrams, in charge of caravan parking at Glastonbury. Thanks for being both understanding and boldly decisive.

• Chris at Croissant Neuf, who somehow guessed that it was me at the gate, and crossed the whole site to help me.
• Clive at Off Grid, who found me a great pitch, and organised a band of helpers to get me through the mud

Least Helpful Festival Worker Award:

It was pouring with rain as Arthur Brown started his set at ‘Spirit of ’71 stage at Glastonbury. But good news: after buying a coffee I could take it to the adjoining tent which had tables and chairs (and about 20 other people), and with sections rolled up as they were, a perfect view of the show. Imagine my distress when a guy started rolling the canvas down, because the marquee was closed due to no performance going on in there. Simple humanity might have made an exception, but no, he was just obeying orders and I had to stand shivering in the rain.

Best Outdoor Workshop Award:

Laser Star Tour by Dave Molz at Sunrise.
I learnt more than ever before because the pointer actually seemed to touch the star.

Cosiest Venues on a cold wet night:

Small World café and stage (Glastonbury,Secret Garden Party, Green Gathering).

WOW – thank you Marion!

Nicola at Sunrise Festival 2010

I used to love camping and going to outdoor festivals but since getting ill with CFS/ME, stopping work and feeling physically and mentally shaky, I sort of gave up on the idea. But how I missed it and felt left out!

Recently, however, I moved to a new flat, and I started to feel that perhaps other good things were possible. I said to a friend who’s a regular festival-goer  ‘I wish you could take me with you sometime’. And straightaway she said  ‘Come to Sunrise! It’s quite small, got a lovely atmosphere – and I’ll do the driving!’.  I was unsure but then I checked the festival website. Music, yoga, organic food, wood-carving, dancing…  and then I saw that organisers had set aside a section of the site for disabled people and were offering free places for carers and help with shifting gear.  I suddenly felt inspired and confident. I said ‘YES let’s do it.’

GAMA Area at Sunrise Festival 2010

Nicola Field

This article was originally written by Nicola Field for her local ME support group – many thanks to Nicola for letting us reproduce it here!

• What would have made your experience easier?
• What could you have been told beforehand to make your experience more manageable?
• Did the organisers really try to take on board your needs and provide for them?
• Was there anyone on the festival site that was specifically there to be a disability liaison co-ordinator with the organisers, or were you just left to get on with it as best you could?
• What made the effort of going to a festival worthwhile for you?
• Any examples of good practise, where individuals or the festival has gone out of its way to make people with disabilities welcomed and comfortable?

Some might say that festival sites, being temporary and generally outdoors and often in fields, are intrinsically difficult places to adapt for people with disabilities. Our view is that with enough forethought, information, planning and creative thinking, most places should be able to be accessible to most people, whatever one’s mobility needs are. And that for the festival organisers, changes and adaptations need not cost a fortune.

Organisers should be honest in describing the festival site:

Hills, rough ground, farm tracks and distances between camping, venues and other attractions, so that people with disabilities have enough information before deciding to buy a ticket. We want to hear your experience of whichever festivals you have been to, and what would have made it easier for you – and of course we would like to hear about as many examples of “good practice” as possible.

There are some festivals really trying to improve and upgrade facilities… we definitely would like to hear about them.

Once we have your views and thoughts we will put them on this website, and we can start compiling information about various festivals. We want to do this in a supportive and positive way, to feed back to festivals your comments and encourage them to make the changes that you are asking for. We are not proposing to take on individual complaints, but will certainly take up collective issues where it is appropriate to.

We can also use this space as an information space about what various festivals are offering, what they say they are offering, what it says on their website, and what improvements year on year are being made. We also need to work with festivals to ensure that their legal obligations of “reasonable adjustments” are being made; and that their crews, stewards and staff understand this concept and abide by it.

We want to work with festivals to make your experience of visiting, working at, or performing at festivals as good as possible.

Any thoughts, suggestions, horror stories or praise please get in touch via the “Contact Us” page – and don’t forget to say which festival and which year you are referring to.