Tuesday 23 August 2011

Beautiful Days 2011

Escot Park in Devon was again the setting for this year's Beautiful Days festival. Held from 19th to 21st August and blessed with good daytime weather, this was a big weekend!
Tickets had sold out and the crowd was a nice mix of ages.
It was our first time to exhibit at beautiful Days and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there.

Our stall was located in a fairly chilled out area very near the big top. This made it easy for us to pop over and see the acoustic performances or just relax at our stall and enjoy the music. One delight was the opportunity to see Ade Edmonson perform with his Bad Shepherds (pictured below). The Levellers are the band behind this festival and they played an acoustic set in the big top and finally closed the festival with a set on the main stage.

A small woodland workshop area proved very popular with kids big and small. Activities in this area included pole lathes and wittling. At night the woodland area was closed, but we were treated to fire dancing in an adjacent area. There were so many activities to entertain the youngsters which made this one of the best family festivals out of the larger events.

It was obvious that an awful lot of effort was put in to the decoration of public spaces and additions of various art installations. Willow was used to great effect for several large sculptures dotted around the site.

A collection of very large wooden mushrooms and garden seating had been lovingly carved and displayed near the big top. We had seen these sculptures at Glastonbury earlier in the summer, but it was nice to see them being appreciated at Beautiful Days.

For more information about this festival, please visit their website by clicking here!