Into the woods
A BRAND NEW FESTIVAL USES ART, FUN AND A SPRINKLING OF PHILOSOPHY TO CELEBRATE THE WOODLAND IN WHICH IT’S SET
Music, forests, art, ideas: if this sounds like your kind of combination, Timber Festival is the event for you. Held over three days in early July, at the heart of the National Forest, this new festival brings together artists, musicians, scientists and thinkers. It’s about exploring what woodlands mean to us and how we can reinvent our relationship with the environment.
THE ENTERTAINMENT
Pack your tent and head for the woods: this July you can expect performances, both theatrical and musical, art installations beneath the canopy, film screenings, comedy, and feasting. Highlights include Luke Jerram’s Museum of the Moon, music from Jane Weaver, Hope & Social, and This Is The Kit, and the world premiere outdoor-theatre adaptation of Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris’s The
Lost Words. The festival has something for all ages, from the eco spa to the forest playground. And if you’re a little airbed-shy, you can book boutique camping accommodation, from bell tents to yurts; bringing a caravan or campervan is also an option.
THE IDEA
Timber Festival is one big environmental project, incorporating music, art and ideas in a magical woodland setting. It’s the brainchild of the National Forest Company and Wild Rumpus, award-winning producers of the Just So Festival. The festival is not-for-profit, with sustainability central to its set-up. The idea is to partner other international forest festivals, to share knowledge that can benefit the environment for all of us. And where better to host it than the National Forest? Stretching for 200 square miles across the Midlands, this 25-year-old forest nurtures 8.5 million trees, showing how well designed woodlands can enrich not only our lives, but also benefit businesses and wildlife, too.