Greenbelt Festival 2025 is my 13th Greenbelt. I am now a veteran.
What is Greenbelt anyway?
Greenbelt is a faith-inspired arts festival begun by Christians decades ago but which is accommodating to all of the faiths now found in Britain. The great issues of the day are discussed by experts on live panels, books are promoted, fascinating people tell their stories, diverse musicians play their music and there is live theatre and comedy.
The festival is held in the grounds of the Boughton Hall historic mansion, near Kettering, in a series of large and small marquees.
Greenbelt is a middle class festival for sure though the organisers are trying to attract a broader and more diverse audience.
Thursday
On the opening Thursday night there was an introductory event. The organisers tell us that their costs have risen to about £1 million. They thank 'Greenbelt Angels' for their £500,000 support in the form of donations. Festival veteran folk singer Martin Joseph plays a couple of songs about global unfairness and the environment - he knows what his audience likes!
We walk around the food stalls which are already open - the rest of the festival opens on Friday.
At dusk the light was lit at the top of a scale replica of the Gaza lighthouse. There was cheering by the watching crowd of several hundred people. The 2024 festival talked a lot about Gaza and unsurprisingly the 2025 one did too.
We did not camp overnight at the festival site though we have in the past; we have stayed there in caravans and motor homes. For 2025 it was back to our nearby hotel for a comfortable evening.
Friday
After a leisurely hotel breakfast we drove the short distance to the festival.
Fast fashion
First we listened to a talk by Patrick Grant about fast fashion and the reality of the global fashion business. Everything is made in China and corporations make most of the profit. The clothing is full of plastic. Even cotton and wool clothes are sewed together with polyester. Most of the costs of fashion brands come not from making the clothes, but from what they spend on marketing.
Fast fashion creates huge waste disposal problems. Charity shops such as Oxfam apparently do not want clothes from the likes of Primark because they cannot sell them. These clothes have little resale value so they are usually dumped in landfill or incinerated.
Martin Joseph
Folk singer songwriter Martin Joseph is a staple of Greenbelt. He played a few of his own acoustic songs in the 'No Fly Zone' about inequality and the need for a better world. Typical stuff for him.
Wolfgang Valbrun on the main stage
Wolfgang Valbrun was very loud and a lot of people liked him. He did a Beatles cover and a few of his own songs.
Ian Christie and the global affluent
Ian Christie gave a talk in which he reminded us that we are probably, at Greenbelt, in the top 10% wealthiest. Those in the top 1% he claimed are responsible for 50% of emissions. Our consumption in the developed world is destroying our global life support systems.
Heavy stuff, even if it is probably true.
Christie's message was that we are being duped into thinking that we cannot afford Net Zero and environmentalism in general. The real problem he says is that about 1% of the world hoard the wealth needed to make Net Zero happen.
There is difficulty in selling the reimagining of the world economy as called for by people like Christie. Many people fear it might destabilise the whole social and economic order for millions of them for no gain. The super-rich would still be safe in their bunkers with private security guards. But what about everyone else?
Also the global elites are not a unified force. Putin's elite is different to Trump's elite which is different to Modi's elite and so forth. Try to get them to act together for the interests of mankind? Good luck with that.
It's the economy stupid
Next some comedy drama in the 'Forum' marquee. A two-man stand-up show by Worklight Theatre called 'It's the economy stupid'. Quite funny. Critical of the establishment. Well it would be at Greenbelt. After all Jesus of Nazareth was a trouble maker. That is why he was nailed to a cross.
The drama makes fun of financial institutions such as banks, while making a few salient points along the way. For example by law banks only need to keep 10% of their cash. That is, your money. They can lend out or gamble the rest on their chosen investments.
It was all light hearted, and I did not learn a great deal from it. Rather it reminded me of what I already knew.
Fair Trade coffee, Fair Trade cakes
Greenbelt loves fair trade and community industries. If you want responsibly sourced straw hats or kaftans it is the place to be. The coffee is mostly very good if pricey. There is an especially good coffee stand in the walled garden part of the festival, where they tend to have arts and crafts stalls, less politics and quieter music.
Maybe the festival organisers have learned something from 2024 when, as I remember, they had the foul-mouthed and very loud Bob Vylan right next to a marquee where there were families listening to an intelligent talk about Ukraine. We were all shocked at Bob Vylan in that context.
Diversity
In the 13 years I have been attending Greenbelt I have seen it become more diverse and reflective of modern Britain. There are more people of colour, more young people, and a greater variety of voices and perspectives represented. There were certainly a lot more tattoos, which often added little to the aesthetics of those sporting them. I am not a fan of over-tattooing.
I got the impression that Greenbelt reflects the situation in modern Britain that something is dying out, something else is growing.
Chatting with strangers
One aspect of Greenbelt is being able to talk to complete strangers who share at least some of our basic perspective on life and the world. And so Friday morning was spent doing some of that, to more Fair Trade coffee and a raspberry croissant.
Art and religion
Next was a discussion about art and religion between non-believers Brian Eno and Liz Slade. Each is afflicted with a god-shaped hole and they discuss their feelings on this.
Eno says that he sees artists in a similar way to mushrooms - a few are visible - deemed to be 'Great' - but beneath the ground they are all connected to each other. Fascinating idea.
Eno asked the question 'Is a novel ever supposed to be taken literally?'. The fact that it is fiction makes it possible to manipulate its events and characters. He asks if religious texts are like novels or are they to be taken literally? This, it struck me, is an important question as religious fundamentalists take religious texts literally and this can cause carnage between conflicting religions. Just watch international television news for some examples.
My father, may he rest in peace, used to say that nothing causes evil like religion.
Art is the efflorescences of the spirit, Eno said.
Finally there was a gospel sing-song where we all sang along with Eno, Slade and their friends.
Saturday
Beth Rowley
I first saw Beth Rowley at Greenbelt in 2018 or 2019 I think it was. I thought she was great and very exciting. Since then she has played a lot of gigs including one in the Gaza Strip, which I guess no one will be doing for a while, alas.
Beth played a set of standards including the favourites 'Any day now I will be released' and 'Nobody's fault but mine'. She has a good voice for bluesy music. And she is easy on the eye too.
Next we chill with some blackcurrant fruit tea and sponge cake in one of the many food marquees.
Women: Making and Unmaking
Beth Allison-Barr and Chine McDonald gave us a talk about women's position in and perceptions of women in the church.
We heard that Mary, mother of Jesus, was an assertive woman and was not white. In fact there were few if any white people among the disciples.
We heard of American women being pushed more and more into the trad wives stereotype by white evangelical churches. Pastors who resist or criticise this trend can be and are sometimes being fired.
There is apparently a fast-spreading version of the bible called the ESV - the English Standard Version. This version of the bible subtly changes text about the role of women to fit into a narrative of female subservience. It can apparently be found in more and more churches here in the United Kingdom.
Beth Allison-Barr is a medieval historian and is adamant that women held more official positions and more power in the medieval church than we realise. The power of women in the American evangelical churches may have peaked, she claims.
Doughnut Economics
Kate Raworth, the 'Doughnut Economics' guru, gave an upbeat, comedic talk about economics and the biosphere. We have depleted three latter by 69% since 1979. A big depletion admittedly. Probably unsustainable.
Raworth made a good point about business and finance only seeing asset values in nature. So a rain forest for example has value in the wood from its trees and the value of the land itself. Nature and its living things are not assigned any intrinsic value.
As usual international finance was the villain. I did not hear of a clear picture of any alternative. But Raworth certainly understands at least one dimension of the very big problem we face.
Raworth had Brian Eno on hand to help with the econo-tainment. Dressed in a top hat, and holding a black briefcase, Eno played a financier. He was up for a laugh and played the dry character well. Certainly the audience enjoyed the whole thing.
Sunday
On Sunday morning at our hotel we were at breakfast next to Beth Rowley and then Martin Joseph.
Religious broadcasting
We loitered over breakfast and for the first time ever missed the Greenbelt Sunday morning service.
Eventually we arrived at the festival site in time to get to the 'No fly zone' marquee. There we listened to a the docu-comedy talk, 'The first religious broadcast', by Paul Kerensa. This was a funny history of radio broadcasting and how it was soon used to spread The Good Word. Church of England of course! BBC radio programming for the first few decades was dominated by the type of Christian content that it's chairman, Lord Reith, a pastor's son, thought the British people needed to hear.
Grace will lead me home
After some more pricey but gourmet Fair Trade coffee, we listened to a docu-musical presentation called 'Grace will lead me home'. It was about the battle against slavery in Britain, from the earliest rumblings about the inhuman trade to William Wilberforce's protracted legal battles.
In 1833 slavery was abolished in the United Kingdom by an Act of Parliament. £20 million was borrowed by the British government in that same year and paid to compensate slave traders. This sum is equivalent to over 2 trillion today, or half of modern Britain's GDP. Britain only paid off the loan in the 2010s.
Save our retirements
We headed over to the Pagoda marquee for a talk about pensions.
The problems are as follows. First there are huge inequalities in the pension system - the poorest 50% hold about 5% of pension assets. The top 10% hold about 70% of all assets. Second the pension funds are investing in deforestation and fossil fuels. Third the pension funds are not realistically factoring in climate change which some experts think may greatly reduce future pensions.
The talk was short on specifics about what pension funds need to do, and what the system as a whole needs to do.
After the experts and activists had finished talking there was a question and answer session. A few fund managers - 'the enemy' - even asked spikey questions. Those guys deal with realities in finance, so perhaps they take a more cautious view.
Many people need good returns from their pensions, given the horrific cost of living and ceaseless high inflation. So it is a balance between environmental sustainability, social responsibility and returns.
Jeremy Corbyn
Jeremy Corbyn needs no introduction. He is a former leader of the British Labour Party, and according to the UK's tabloid newspapers, the unacceptable face of the 'loony left'. We always hear less about the 'loony right', but that is because British tabloid owners are of a certain train of thought. True, Corbyn was once in dialogue with IRA/Sinn Fein commanders, but hell those guys have all written their memoirs now.
Corbyn has guts and it might yet pay him big dividends. He is the only politician prepared to talk about spiralling rates of homelessness in Britain, a problem which has become normalised in the political mainstream.
Corbyn has formed a new party called 'Your Party' which promises old-school left socialism. He received a rapturous reception at the beginning and end of his compered talk, and answered audience questions of which there were many. The high number of young people listening was noticeable. With the voting age reduced to 16 as it will be by the time of the next election, the 'Your Party' might do well.
We then had lentil curry and vegan chocolate cake in the 'Talk' food marquee.
Afterwards we toured the stalls of various charities, often Christian inspired, which battle for Green living, an end to homelessness, an end to poverty, and fairness for Palestinians.
Kate Rusby
At 7pm on the main 'Glade' stage was the venerable Kate Rusby. Her South Yorkshire humour was much in evidence as usual.
Rusby started with an all-electric band and covered a few pop numbers in her set. Personally I preferred her more acoustic sets from the early 2010s. Then again change is a big constant in the arts, especially contemporary music.
Later in her set her band magically donned acoustic instruments and it was just like old times! She received enthusiastic applause at the end of the set.
Martin Joseph
Martin Joseph is the high priest of Greenbelt. At 8pm on the closing night he and female guest Little Moon, a fellow singer songwriter, performed a few 'conscience of the world' songs, as is his way.
Joseph also had a live video link to a pal of his, Dave Gunning, a Canadian singer songwriter, and they all took it in turns to sing soft and soulful songs.
The performances were very chilled, and combined with the warm summer breeze of August, the event made a fitting summation of the festival.
So that was Greenbelt 2025.
Reflections
What was the theme of this year's festival? The most focussed theme was undoubtedly Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there. Then there was the general feeling of a broken economic system in Britain which is crushing the lives of people, especially the young. And of a system which is crushing the Earth and its poorest citizens.
Some things never change. I got the impression though, that at least in the UK, they might be changing now.
