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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I thought I’d post some of the drawings I did for various Greenbelt-related things for those who have not seen them. These are the rare black and white versions of some colour cartoons that appeared on the Guide to Greenbelt published by the Church Times.

Incidentally I had a great time loitering in the Church Times yurt pretending to be important and writing my name inside books when no-one was looking. The Church Times Team were promoting their new magazine for girls called ‘Caris‘. I posted about it a month or two back if you remember - at the time it was going to be called ‘Grace’ but this was changed for legal reasons.

Also in the yurt were Third Way, now also part of the Church Times setup. They had the folding table on the right.

In other Greenbelt news, you may not have read this link on many other blogs. From the Bexhill-on-Sea Observer:
Members of the St Peter’s Youth Group go to Greenbelt with the blessing of the Rector, and return again to Bexhill as planned on Monday evening.

Posted by Dave at 6:27 pm on August 29, 2007 and filed under Cartoons, Festivals and Exhibitions, Greenbelt, Religion.

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Usually it takes a few days to go through these phases (with the showering being first) but today I have been through all of them.

I have had a splendid time at the Festival and have returned invigorated. This is mainly because of the many friends I have seen and people I have met I think. It was great to see and meet you. I did go to some good sermons and lectures and pop groups too. I will be posting about some of the things I saw and heard and drew at Greenbelt over the next few days although that might depend upon whether I lapse back into one of the earlier phases and if so which one.

The camper van made it and made it back again. This is a wonder to us all.

Feel free to use this cartoon on your blog. A link here would be lovely.

Posted by Dave at 10:56 pm on August 28, 2007 and filed under Cartoons, Festivals and Exhibitions, Greenbelt, Religion.

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[Cartoon from the Dave Walker Guide to Greenbelt, 2005]

We’re about to leave to go to the Greenbelt Festival via various places. Here are some sundry bits of information relating to Greenbelt this year:

I have done 2 lots of drawings for the 2007 festival, both of which will be available free. These are:

1. Some drawings for the children’s booklet for the Sunday morning service. You should be able to get hold of one if you lie about your age, or indeed if you have children. The Sunday morning service is being organised by Sanctus1 this year and they asked me to make a contribution which I was pleased to do.
2. The Church Times Guide to Greenbelt. The Church Times did a Guide to the Festival in 2005 and 2006, and we have done another this year. I say ‘we’ because I have done some cartoons for the cover and also some inside (I think). I’ve only seen the cover so I don’t know what is inside. You can pick up a copy from the Church Times tent, and I’ll be helping to hand them out around the site.

I’ll post some or all of this material on the blog in September, as I’m aware that many people reading will not be at Greenbelt (and for whom this post is, I imagine, quite tedious).

Talking of the Church Times, they will be giving my book away again this year as part of an introductory ’subscription to the newspaper’ offer, which I’m pleased about. They are signed copies, which reduces the value of the book by about 13 or 14 percent, but it is a good offer nevertheless.

Once again we will be holding our annual Wibsite gathering, this time at 3pm on Sunday on the campsite. If you are connected to the Wibsite in some tenuous way then you’re most welcome. This year Chris, who built the Wiblog system will be with us, which is marvellous. We might or might not have some news relating to the Wibsite which we will announcing to a great fanfare and some ready-salted cashew nuts. We have been blogging on the Wibsite for 5 years now - would you believe it.

All sorts of other people are doing all sorts of things at the festival. Here are a few:

• John Davies is doing a main grandstand talk as well as leading a walk around Cheltenham. This is, I imagine, a warmup for his walk along the route of the M62, which begins after Greenbelt.
• Maggi Dawn will be speaking, signing copies of her new book and singing.
• The Last Orders people have a blog all about their daily evening show.
• I’ve heard that the Mad Priest will be there. He is somebody I’d like to meet.
• The Tall Skinny Kiwi has put a call out for punters to attend his Saturday evening session. I doubt you’ll get a seat to be honest.
• Rev Sam is very kindly planning to buy me a beer.
• The Greenbelt technical people are hoping you’ll add photos to their Flickr group.
• Visions of York are doing a great big alternative worship thing in the Centaur.
• Scripture Union are launching Wise Traveller. Contributors include john Davies (above) and Kester Brewin.

Weather Forecast: At the moment it’s looking good. But we all know that 5 day forecasts are a load of nonsense.

If you’re at Greenbelt it would be great to meet / see you. All being well (if the van makes it) we’ll be in campsite 9 with a rusty campervan and a big white ‘W’ flag, so do come and say hello. Alternatively the Church Times tent would be a place to contact me. If I’m not there you could leave a message perhaps.

Comments on this blog may take a while to be moderated for the next week.

Posted by Dave at 10:53 pm on August 20, 2007 and filed under Cartoons, Festivals and Exhibitions, Greenbelt.

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I’ve been wondering about whether the Greenbelt Festival was going to happen, what with the weather and everything. This has been posted on their website and in the ‘Dispatches’ newsletter:

Thanks for all your calls and emails concerning the flooding in
Gloucestershire and how this might affect Greenbelt. Our site team live and
work out of Cheltenham and we are in daily contact with the Racecourse there
­ which is unaffected by any flooding ­ and Greenbelt will be going ahead as
planned.* We will continue to update you on this situation ­ if it changes ­
via the website and through Dispatches. This is a very busy time of the year
for us, so we’d appreciate it if you didn’t call or email the office about
this issue. Please spread the word. The show will go on!

*This is not to ignore that things are extremely difficult for
Gloucestershire residents at present. Our thoughts are with them.

I have to say that it is the drinking water issue that has been concerning me rather than flooding of the racecourse itself. With so many people having no water to be bringing an extra 20000 people into the area seemed to me not the most helpful thing. But the organisers have obviously thought this through and decided that by the time of the Festival it should not be a problem. Hopefully the situation will have been resolved well before the August bank holiday.

Update: I have learned, by eavesdropping at various doors, that:
1) The drainage at the racecourse is generally very good. Last year there was extreme weather the week before, but most areas had drained very well by the time the festival opened.
2) The festival has been investing in more temporary trekway for the centre course village.
3) The one change that might have to happen is restriction of vehicles onto the campsite areas. So you might have to park in the car parks and carry your camping gear to the campsite.

My advice would be to keep an eye on the Festival website for further informational updates.

Posted by Dave at 11:16 am on July 26, 2007 and filed under Festivals and Exhibitions, Greenbelt, Religion.

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Surefish are organising a ‘Great Big Hymn Sing‘ at the Greenbelt Festival and are trying to find which are the 10 most popular hymns using a public vote. You can listen to music files of the music to help you decide. It sounds like a complex process with the hymns being whittled down to 50, then 25, then 10, a bit like we don’t do in church, though it’s an idea.

At last year’s festival there was a very successful ‘beer and hymns’ evening in the beer tent. Unfortunately the concept became a bit hijacked by charismatic types who started to sing dubious praise choruses in the beer tent the following night, putting everyone off their organic real lager. The beer tent staff had to extinguish their over enthusiasm by turning up some 80s music on the PA system.

I know this makes it sound like I spend my Greenbelt Festival evenings in the beer tent - I was probably just happening to be passing by on both occasions.

Above: Beer tent at Greenbelt - view from behind the bar as seen by someone who was probably just happening to be passing by.

Update: St Clement Chorlton are holding a beer festival this weekend, via Rob on the Sanctus1 blog.

Posted by Dave at 1:38 pm on July 11, 2007 and filed under Church, Festivals and Exhibitions, Greenbelt, Religion.

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Martyn Joseph is a singer who is popular at Greenbelt festival and other such places. Growing up in south Wales I went to his concerts in school halls and churches on quite a few occasions.

Martyn has been in the news this week (Well, the Western Mail and BBC radio Wales) because of a lyric on his latest live album which was recorded at Greenbelt last year. Here is the news report which explains things in more depth.

The lyric is about Pat Robertson, an American TV Evangelist well known for being wrong. One of his latest projects is Pat’s Age-defying Protein Pancakes. I have no idea whether they work or not, but if they have any positive benefits for someone who has ‘come down with something’ then I for one am interested.

As to whether “I’m gonna find me a TV evangelist and punch him in the face” is an acceptable song lyric when sung in an ironic humourous way: I will leave you to decide.

Update: the Radio Wales interview is now available on Martyn Joseph’s website.

Posted by Dave at 2:46 pm on March 6, 2007 and filed under Current events, Greenbelt, Religion.

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Chas, Dave and Billy Bragg are all playing the Greenbelt Festival this summer. (Update: Also Duke Special. He’s been playing Greenbelt for quite a few years now, but seems to have bcome all famous.)

Greenbelt - Chas n Dave
Greenbelt - Billy Bragg
Greenbelt - Duke Special
Greenbelt - Listings Section

In other Festival / Exhibition news, I won’t be having a stall at the Christian Resources Exhibition from the 15th to the 18th of May this year. Whilst it was a good thing to do in previous years I decided that it didn’t make financial sense to do so this year. I do hope to go though and haven’t ruled out exhibiting again in the future.

Posted by Dave at 10:37 am on March 1, 2007 and filed under Festivals and Exhibitions, Greenbelt.

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Just a reminder that the deadline for the cheapest tickets for the Greenbelt Festival is at the end of October, ie in a few minutes. However, due to unforseen whathaveyous you now have one more day to order your budget passes at the Greenbelt website.

Talking of Greenbelt (tenuous link), you might remember that a few years ago I and a few others dressed up as Ned Flanders from the Simpsons at the festival and got our pictures in the Daily Star. I posted the photo here. Well, the ‘Ned Flanders Appreciation Society’ have been in action again, this time on the Graham Norton television show. A report by one of the Ned-ees is here on the Ship of the Fools website.

I had the misfortune to watch the programme itself, which really was awful, though well done to Simon and Steve for getting on there. It was quite amusing to see Graham Norton swearing that the Ned Flanders Appreciation Society really is genuine and really has an annual meeting once a year. Somewhat of an inexactitude there I think Graham.

Posted by Dave at 11:28 pm on October 31, 2006 and filed under Festivals and Exhibitions, Greenbelt, TV.

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‘Heaven in Ordinary’ is going to be the theme of the Greenbelt Festival next year. The particulars are on the Greenbelt site. ‘Heaven in Ordinary’ is, I have discovered, a phrase from a peoem by George Herbert entitled ‘Prayer‘.

John Davies has written a splendid piece in this month’s Third Way about looking for heavenly things in the ordinariness of life. It is available as a pdf download (about 600kb) on a site called Urblog. John’s website (always good value) is here and Third Way has a website too.

John did a talk on this subject at this year’s festival which I didn’t get to hear, but I imgine it might have been along the same sort of lines as this article.

More later perhaps, but for now my internet time has reached a curtailment.

Posted by Dave at 1:51 pm on October 7, 2006 and filed under Greenbelt, Spirituality.

2 Comments

This is the cover of the Church Times ‘Guide to Greenbelt’ for 2006. Last year, if you remember I did some Guide to Greenbelt cartoons, but this year a more ’sample of the newspaper’ format was chosen which was fair enough really. I did the lettering for the cover (click the image to see it) but nothing else, though a couple of my cartoons were included. Only one of the think bubbles was my idea I must say - you might be able to guess which.

I thought this year’s guide was quite good, but not everyone agreed so it seems. Tom the Big Bulky Anglican for instance:

“This year CT produced much the worst guide to the Festival imaginable (design was the usual disaster and content was pretty bland) camped out in a Yurt in a kind of no-mans land in front of the main stand.”

Do you know, what with one thing and another I’m almost beginning to wonder whether Tom isn’t a great fan of the Church Times. Just a hunch, nothing more.

So, Tom. Do you think that the Church Times could avoid their design disasters by switching over to white lettering on a black background?

Posted by Dave at 2:10 pm on September 4, 2006 and filed under Cartooning, Festivals and Exhibitions, Greenbelt.

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Above: Signing copies of ‘The Dave Walker Guide to the Church’ in the Church Times yurt at Greenbelt. The reception wasn’t all quite this rapturous, but I had a great time sitting in the yurt for a number of spells over the weekend. Lovely to meet so many people enthusiastic about what I do.

It seems a bit self seeking to be publishing these photographs, but then again I think one has to make the most of these things when they happen. Click below if you’d like to see a couple more.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Dave at 1:23 pm on September 2, 2006 and filed under CartoonChurch progress, Festivals and Exhibitions, Greenbelt.

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