Greenbelt 2025: Hope in the Making

We’re delighted to bring you a guest blog from Paul Northup, creative director of Greenbelt Festival. Paul gets excited about this year’s theme and why the festival is a natural home for pioneers.

During our Communion gathering at the festival last year, we asked Daoud Nassar, from the Tent of Nations in the West Bank, what he does when all seems hopeless – surrounded as his farm is on all sides by illegal Israeli settlements. 

“I go out and I plant a tree,” he said.

The profound simplicity of that response has stayed with us ever since. Somehow we knew that it had to inform our theme thinking for Greenbelt 2025. 

At Greenbelt this year we want, in lots of ways, to go back to our roots. To strip things back and dig the ground we come from. Holding fast to the idea that the festival, at its best, must continue to be somewhere to believe in and belong to. A place of hope (against all hope).

As Daoud, and so many other artists, activists, speakers and leaders have taught us over more than 50 years now: hope is a practice, an attitude, a commitment. And something, more often than not, shaped by collaborating with, and belonging to, others. 

It is something we make together, in the fields each year. But also in our lives year-round. Hope has been in the making at Greenbelt for over 50 years. And our sights are now set on the next half-century.

For a while now, one of our key visual icons as a festival has been a pair of uplifted hands, with palms open and outstretched, cradling a few seeds. For this year, instead of reaching up in celebration and devotion, these hands now reach down into the soil, immersing themselves in the messiness, and the work of making life and love possible. 

As we gather together this August we will remind ourselves of our rootedness in an ancient story of hope, and of the seeds of goodness that have been planted in us. We will draw strength and encouragement in realising that we are not alone in facing the turmoil of the world. 

Away from the overwhelm of the 24-hour news cycle (even if just for one weekend), we can choose to roll up our sleeves, open our hearts and be reminded that, together in God, we can be the change we want to see in the world.

Why do pioneers find a home at Greenbelt?

Perhaps pioneers find a home at Greenbelt because Greenbelt has always been a pioneering community (way before that missional language was used). It’s always been restless and innovative. It was born on the fringes of mainstream church with a vision for providing creative Christians of all denominations a space to imagine new forms of believing and belonging – with the arts and the gospels as its founding lenses.  

As it was birthed, a third ‘window’ was quickly embedded in the kaleidoscopic way of seeing that Greenbelt was fleshing out – that of social justice. And, with it, the festival’s three-stranded DNA helix was established: faith, arts, justice; artistry, activism and belief. Greenbelt would make an annual opening in time in the centre of a venn diagram where these three concerns overlapped.

And that’s been Greenbelt’s pioneering story ever since. Rooted in the tradition, but compelled to reshape it so that it doesn’t die, Greenbelt makes a space where pioneers of all sorts can play and imagine. It’s a temporary autonomous zone (a TAZ, to borrow Hakim Bey’s phrase). A space where the ‘normal rules do not apply’. And because Greenbelt is not part of the institutional established church, it has the freedom – some would say gift – to make space for experimentation and exploration.

Pioneers are also those who know that gatherings along the way are vital for encouragement and sustenance. Their year-round work and mission might often feel lonely. But at Greenbelt they can be with ‘their people’. They can realise that they are not alone. And this can be incredibly powerful in itself.

Pioneers know that the Christian story is not over; that the gospel is still being made; and that it is, in many senses, according to everyone. Greenbelt allows for this possibility. 

What I’m excited about this year 

I’m writing this at the time of year when everything is a blur. We are into the relentless details that have to be nailed in order for the festival to work. I get asked, “Who’s performing this year?” and I often and genuinely don’t quite remember! But, with a slight pause, I can list a few…

I am excited that Nadine Shah will headline our first evening – her mesmeric music and her outspokenness are, I think, prophetic. I am thrilled that writer Lamorna Ash will join us (a must-see for all pioneers, I would say). I am pleased and proud that we have No Fly Zone as a full-blown hybrid venue this year, sharing a morning-until-night livestream programme with a remote audience, meaning we can be more accessible to more people. I am looking forward to seeing how Greenbelters engage with The Empathy Museum’s ‘A Mile In Your Shoes’ experience. And I am also excited that, after years and years of asking, Jeremy Corbyn will be with us this year, too.

But I know that no matter how hard we work on curating the bill, the real magic of Greenbelt happens outside of the bill. In precisely what we haven’t programmed. In queues and on the campsite. At the Open Mic night or in among the circles of folk sharing communion with one another on Sunday morning. 

Greenbelt makes a temporary community out of the ground each year, but it’s a community whose energy fuels those who are part of it for their lives, loves and work year-round. I hope that this year you’ll join us as together we remember that hope is in the making.

Get our email newsletter:

SIGN UP