Greenbelt 2010 has come to an end. I’ve had a marvellous time as usual. This year it was mainly (for me at least) about hanging around and chatting to people, my new book, the Church Times cartoon exhibition, and my nightly appearances in Last Orders, the late night comedy show.

The latter took up the most time and caused the most anxiety, but I loved doing it. I’m hugely grateful to have been given the opportunity. Hopefully I’ll get to do more of my slightly peculiar brand of ‘cartoon stand-up’ in the future.

I thought it might be quite useful for people who attended Last Orders to know how they can get hold of some of the cartoons, and so I’ve put together a list of the diagrams I used each night, links to their online location if there is one, and where they originally appeared. In particular I’ve listed the book (if any) that each cartoon is taken from, although in some cases the version I showed was not quite the original version. I’m afraid that these lists may appear a little nonsensical to anyone who wasn’t there as there were other bits of text in-between.

I’m aiming to do something similar with the cartoon exhibition cartoons in the next few days.

Friday, Part I of IV: Things you needed to know before you got here
The parable of the Greenbelters (New material)
How to analyse your camping neighbours – originally Tents (Church Times, The Exciting World of Churchgoing)
How to recognise your tent (Church Times Guide to Greenbelt 2007)
How to recognise your tent in the dark (Church Times Guide to Greenbelt 2007)

Saturday, Part II of IV: What to expect at the Greenbelt Sunday Service
The Peace (Church Times, The Dave Walker Guide to the Church)
Journey of the collection plates (The Dave Walker Guide to the Church)
The Sermon (Church Times, My Pew: Things I have seen from it)
Communion (Church Times, My Pew: Things I have seen from it)
After-service coffee (Church Times, My Pew: Things I have seen from it)
Suggested ways to behave, originally ‘How to make it known (The Dave Walker Guide to the Church)
The all-age service (Church Times, My Pew: Things I have seen from it)
How to tell what is going on (Church Times, The Dave Walker Guide to the Church)

Sunday, Part III of IV: Things you will have already found out by now
How to queue for a talk in a sensible fashion (previously unpublished as far as I can remember)
Returning to the campsite for lunch (Church Times Guide to Greenbelt 2005)
Taking something to sit on (Various places, including here and Church Times Guide to Greenbelt 2005)
Flagpoles (Church Times Guide to Greenbelt 2005)
Meeting people that you have not seen for a number of years (new material)
The programme for young people (new material)
How to recognise Greenbelters (new material)
The church party, originally New Year’s Eve (Church Times, The Exciting World of Churchgoing)

Monday, Part IV of IV: What to do now that you have become enthusiastic about Christianity
Church picture, originally It is not about the numbers (My Pew: Things I have seen from it)
The welcomers (Church Times, My Pew: Things I have seen from it)
The welcome pack (Church Times, My Pew: Things I have seen from it)
Will anyone notice that I am there, originally Numbers (Church Times, The Exciting World of Churchgoing)
The five worst places to sit, originally Pews (Church Times, My Pew: Things I have seen from it)

Posted by Dave at 11:38 pm on August 31, 2010 and filed under Cartoons, Festivals and Exhibitions, Greenbelt.

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I am now back on this blog after a holiday (We went to Ireland – more about that another time). Lo and behold it is now nearly the end of August, which means that it is time for my favourite weekend of the year, the Greenbelt Festival. Here is what I am doing or involved with at Greenbelt this year:

Launch of ‘The Exciting World of Churchgoing’

My new book, The Exciting World of Churchgoing will be available at the Greenbelt Festival and quite possibly in the shops this week. Hooray!

It is the third book of my Church Times ‘Guide to the Church’ cartoons. There’s no launch party planned. Perhaps I should organise one. Bit late really as people won’t have time to hire all of the formal kit etc.

[Aside: You can (when it becomes available) get the book via your local Christian bookshop, or via Amazon, Church House Bookshop, Waterstones or the publishers, Canterbury Press.]

Nightly appearance at Last Orders

This is the most exciting but most terrifying thing in the world for me at the moment. I will be showing some cartoons and doing some very limited talking in ‘Last Orders‘ on each night, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Last Orders starts at 11pm and is in the 2000 seater ‘Centaur’ venue, and other people on the bill include proper comedians like Milton Jones. Oh dear, what have I got myself into? On the plus side, whenever I have done these things before I have loved doing them and people have found them quite enjoyable and there has been some polite applause at the end.

No, I haven’t prepared it yet.

Cartoon Exhibition in the Church Times Tent

Some of my latest diagrams and some from the book will be on display in the Church Times tent. These will include ones like ‘The Periodic Table of Churchgoers’ which have thus far not been widely available beyond the newspaper.

The Church Times tent is in front of the grandstand. This year the tent has swapped places with the ‘Hub’ Literature venue as the Church Times was found to be on dodgy ground. By implication this means that the Literature is now on dodgy ground. This is a conundrum I haven’t yet got to the bottom of.

Map of Greenbelt in the ‘Church Times Guide to Greenbelt’

Every year I do a map of the festival site and moan about how difficult it is to draw for weeks on end to anyone who will listen. You can get hold of it in the free Church Times Guide to Greenbelt, available from the Church Times tent or from touts (ie me) who will be handing it out.

Loitering

When not doing other things I’ll generally be hanging around in the Church Times tent pretending to help. Do come and say hello, and perhaps we can meet up for a cup of tea or beer. Not too much beer though, as I must be alert during the evenings.

Other

I think I might be part of some comics thing. I don’t really know about that.

Posted by Dave at 5:17 pm on August 23, 2010 and filed under Books, CartoonChurch progress, Cartoons, Festivals and Exhibitions, Greenbelt.

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I was clicking around the internet, and the next thing you know have booked to go to the Spring Harvest Christian seaside conference in Skegness, April 11-16 (Week ‘two’ to those in the know).

Anyone else going? Lets meet up! I don’t know if I’ll be blogging or cartooning or anything. I might just draw huge diagrams in the shingle on the beach that will be washed away by the incoming tide, thereby demonstrating their ultimate futility.

[Cartoon originally posted on the Church Times Blog sometime around here, when I did my in-depth analysis of being at the event.]

Posted by Dave at 10:09 pm on March 15, 2010 and filed under Cartoons, Festivals and Exhibitions.

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This week has been the week of the Christian Resources Exhibition in Esher, Surrey, where the UK’s Christian organisations get together to buy and sell, like in the temple. Today is the last and greatest day of the feast, so I am heading off to do some further in-depth reporting.

I am secretly quite pleased with a series of photos I took on Wednesday: The Christian Resources Exhibition in photographs. (The page has a bitly address too in case you are a Tweetist: http://bit.ly/15iKx4 )

See you there perhaps if you’re there. Otherwise I intend to post some updates during the day on the Church Times blog, or failing that, Twitter (@davewalker).

A quick “shout out” (as they say amongst young people) to the unexpected clergy I saw on Wednesday: David Stone, Woody, Dave Warnock, Mark Hendley, and others.

Posted by Dave at 7:12 am on May 15, 2009 and filed under Festivals and Exhibitions.

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The August Bank Holiday is of course the weekend of the very good Greenbelt Festival.

This year our plans have changed somewhat, as at the time of writing I’m still not feeling that great healthwise. For the first year since I started going (which was, I think, 1999) the campervan will be staying at home and we will not be going a day early to camp at a highly secret Gloucestershire location ready to queue up at 10am at Cheltenham Racecourse on Friday morning. We (that’s my wife and I) are still planning to go, but have decided that staying in a hotel would be a better option for someone who doesn’t quite know how much of the Festival he’s going to feel like going to.

Our traditional Wibsite meet will still be happening (latest info here) but not at the usual venue. The plan is currently the beer tent tiny tea tent at 4.30 on Saturday – hopefully word will get around if there is any change.

I hope to be in the Church Times tent for some time over the weekend. The tent is to host a cartoon exhibition featuring work by the different Church Times cartoonists. If, on the off-chance, you had any interest in ‘My Pew‘ and/or the 2009 calendar then it is rumoured that they will be available.

Also available in the tent will be the Church Times Guide to Greenbelt, a free… well… guide to Greenbelt. I don’t really know what will be in it, but it is just possible that it might include a map of the site in a style you might recognise.

All being well I will be writing about the Festival on the Church Times blog (link). I’ve even gone so far as to organise a press pass so that I can go and make use of an electrical socket in the press room as my super-duper miniature mobile festival-blogging laptop with-added-dongle has a battery life of about half an hour. This (CartoonChurch) blog may go fairly quiet until after the weekend as I will be concentrating my efforts on the Church Times one.

Of course my involvement is subject to my being up and about, which I really hope I will be as Greenbelt is usually the highlight of my year. I’m determined to be there for some of it even if I have to crawl around on hands and/or knees. I’ll look forward to seeing some of you there – do come and say hello if you see me loitering or indeed crawling around in the aforementioned manner.

Posted by Dave at 11:23 pm on August 20, 2008 and filed under Festivals and Exhibitions, Greenbelt.

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The CartoonChurch stand in the Lambeth Conference Marketplace will open on Monday for the best part of two weeks. It will be open from 11am until 9pm most days except Thursday 24 July.

This is the stand in its pre-setup state. As you can see I asked for the following fittings to be installed:

• Two folding chairs
• One collapsible church hall table
• One basketball hoop with attached large white mechanism thing
• One small cardboard box
• One sheet of A4 paper

Overall I think the staff have done remarkably well, don’t you?

Please feel free to use the comments to suggest how we might be able to use this assorted equipment. Remember that we need to communicate the ethos of the organisation and sell lots of books.

[Marketplace helpers: Sorry for lack of communication with some of you. I will send you some final information shortly.]

Posted by Dave at 8:27 pm on July 18, 2008 and filed under Festivals and Exhibitions, Lambeth 08, Lambeth Conference, Photographs.

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Whilst I’m on an ‘asking for things’ day…

As I’ve mentioned here I’m going to have a stand in the ‘Marketplace‘ area at the Lambeth Conference. It will have books, calendars, cards, cartoon licence information and suchlike. I have a small team of people who are kindly helping me to run it, but I could do with one or two more people.

The dates are as follows: Monday 21 July – Saturday 2 August, closed on Thursday 24 July and Sunday 27 July. Opening times are 11am to 9pm except on the final Saturday when it closes at 6pm. The Marketplace is open to the public as well as all of the bishops, spouses and everyone else involved.

I am looking for anyone who would enjoy helping with such a thing who would be willing to be around even for a single day. Food would be provided and I do have some accommodation available for those able to help for several days. I plan to have several people around on each day to look after the stand so that there are plenty of opportunities for breaks, mingling with bishops etc. The number of people I will need does depend upon various factors – the plans of one or two people I’m still waiting to hear from being one. If you might be interested send me a message and we can talk.

I forgot to say – there will be special badges.

Posted by Dave at 12:07 pm on May 27, 2008 and filed under Festivals and Exhibitions, Lambeth 08, Religion.

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The Ship of Fools folks had a stand at the Christian Resources Exhibition this year for the first time. A few photos are below – click ‘read the rest of this entry’ if you can’t see them.

You can find more of my blogging from today’s CRE on the Church Times blog. I’ll be there again tomorrow to do a bit more blogging and for the former SPCK employee gathering.

Above: Simon (left), Tony K (right) and someone else whose name I’m afraid I’ve forgotten.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Dave at 9:49 pm on May 13, 2008 and filed under Festivals and Exhibitions, Religion.

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I couldn’t find this online anywhere, so I’ve posted it below. The press people sent it to me, so I’m assuming they’d like it to be seen. It is an article by Rob Frost, who sadly died in November 2007.

The Pentecost Festival is taking place in London from the 9th to the 11th of May 2008. See my post on the Church Times blog for more information.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Dave at 8:49 am on April 21, 2008 and filed under Festivals and Exhibitions, Religion.

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The answer is now revealed: The Lambeth Conference Official Web site – Marketplace

Posted by Dave at 11:58 am on April 9, 2008 and filed under Festivals and Exhibitions, Lambeth 08, Religion.

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I’m at the Spring Harvest evangelical holiday camp for much of the coming week, and will be keeping a diary on my Church Times blog.

In the meantime please forgive the lack of posts and delays in comment moderation on this site.

Update:

• Spring Harvest: Day 2
• Spring Harvest: Day 3
• Spring Harvest: Day 4

Posted by Dave at 10:14 am on April 5, 2008 and filed under Blogging, Festivals and Exhibitions, Religion.

6 Comments

From the Greenbelt website:

…this year, we’ll be holding our Festival Communion service at 3pm on Sunday afternoon

To half of the readership of this website this will be utterly irrelevant.
To the other half this will be utterly life changing. Well… OK, it will be of passing interest.

Posted by Dave at 1:43 pm on March 27, 2008 and filed under Festivals and Exhibitions, Greenbelt, Religion.

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