Big festivals like Glastonbury are now our mainstream. A cursory read through the comments, tweets and chatter from Glastonbury this year alone highlights a real sense of ennui, even dissatisfaction with the growing commercialisation of many of the bigger festivals, many of which are run by the same corporate entities. They are now at the centre of popular culture, watched by millions on TV at home. The coverage revolves around the big headliners, who turn up in their luxury tour buses, play a set and leave and a lot of the heart and soul of what attracted people in the first place disintegrates. I loved Glastonbury for many years, but for me, it has lost its heart and soul in recent times and for many other people too, I would imagine.

I would hope there will be a return to the more radical roots of festivals with smaller, more intimate festivals that are as much about the people, the community spirit and new forms of creative expression as they are about the music, sponsorship and profit. 

Bestival, End of the Road, Festinho, and Green Man are just a few of the so-called ‘boutique’ events that have surfaced in the last few years as well as a number of intimate gatherings taking place in pub gardens up and down the country each summer. Since my exit from The Big Chill in 2008 I’m favouring those smaller events including Chilled Cider, a highly intimate free gathering of people and acts outside arguably the best pub in the world – The Square and Compass pub in rural Dorset, along with Haselstock and the aforementioned Festinho.

The village I moved to in Northamptonshire – Braunston - will be staging its first festival on August Bank Holiday which will have an almost ‘pop-up’ feel to most of the events. With technology and communications progressing as it is, pop-up culture is very much on the agenda. Last month I turned my barn into a ‘pop-up cinema’ for the night for local residents and friends and were seeing more and more of that style of event”,These smaller festivals and pop-up events are I believe a direct response to an underlying need for community. People want to return to the ethos of village life that has been slowly disappearing from our society over the last fifty years.

My next venture will be all about community in its widest sense. The concept of the festival is looking a little tired and rooted to the spot these days, subject as it is to the vagaries of British weather, and the whims of local council officials and policing requirements, not to mention the huge amount of competition from other similar events, all going for the same names. It might be argued that it’s literally and metaphorically stuck in the mud, along with the hedonistic mindset of many of the revellers that attend year after year. I see the future in a very different style of event and community gathering, designed and crafted by communities who will determine its ethos and content collectively. These could happen both indoor and outdoor and are as likely to be about social meet ups and exchange of ideas as about passive entertainment.