2000 Trees Festival - 13-14 July 2007
2000 trees is a new festival for 2007. With over 400 festivals a year now to compete against you have to have some good ideas to attract the paying guests who have such a choice. The main themes of 2000 trees are that it is not at all commercial, in fact it is put on by a group of friends who got disillusioned by commercial festivals, it has 'green' ethics and it promotes local talent.
We had asked the festival if we could bring our 'Fight the Pipe' information stall to the event. They were happy to have us as our campaign keeps with the 'green' theme of the festival. We had lots of local interest and support for our campaign which was really good and it gave us a base to enjoy the festival from.
The festival itself was beautifully small, 2000 tickets went on sale although I don't think it was a sell out. The site was compact enough to walk round easily but big enough for there to be space everywhere. As you can see from the pictures it was never crowded anywhere apart from in front of the stages. The crowd were a mix of young groups of people and families, mostly local but I talked to people that had travelled from London, Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire and Derbyshire.
The music was mainly rock and indie with some folk although that was the main stage as I didn't get to the acoustic stage much. There was a dance gazebo, yes that's right a gazebo with DJs spinning some tunes and people seemed to be enjoying it despite it only being a gazebo! My suggestion for next year would be to make that a proper tent with reggae/ska/punk stuff on in the daytime and more dance stuff in the evening but then that's just because it would suit my musical taste much better!
A great festival, lots of potential to carry on for many years and the potential to become much better. Great to have so many local bands on although a couple more bigger names for the evening wouldn't go a miss and a kids area is a must to appeal more to families. A healing area would be great, more stalls would be good but not a necessity. An absolute bargain at just over £30 and I will hopefully be back next year!
Below are a selection of photographs from the gathering.
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