Timber announces enchanting programme line up for 2019 International Forest Festival
Timber is a unique, site-specific festival celebrating nature. Located at Feanedock, a 70acre woodland site in the National Forest, Timber returns for a second year from July 5-7 2019 – fresh from winning Best New Festival at the UK Festival Awards.
The unique site will host dance, performance, arts and debate, with music from Gwenno, Hannah Peel, Stealing Sheep, You Tell Me, Jesca Hoop and guest curator Elizabeth Alker from BBC Radio 3 and 6Music, to name a few.
Let your imagination run wild with evocative performances throughout the weekend. Lost in Translation will see a thrilling circus show devised just for Timber, based on Italo Calvino’s novel The Baron in the Trees. The Baron in the Trees is a playful, romantic fable, set in the 18th century where the 12-year-old son of the Baron climbs a tree in protest at being forced to eat snails, vowing never to touch the ground again. This show includes amazing acrobatics, slapstick, juggling and aerial stunts.
Cardboardia, an independent community of artists and performers, will design and create a new country. Festival go-ers will be invited to join in and make their own instruments, which they can play together in the official Cardboardia Woodland Orchestra. The Tyran of Cardboardia, who rules over this new country, will also lead a very special procession through the woodland.
Max Calaf will be bringing his jaw dropping physical theatre to Timber, a contemporary circus artist, Max specialises in trampoline acrobatics and object manipulation. Prepare to be amazed as Max pushes the boundaries of what can be performed on a trampoline.
Theatre company Pif Paf’s mechanical fire-powered bakery, Toast will create a magical world of stories, songs, and tiny morsels of fresh celebration breads which won’t fail to charm.
Shimmer by artist Dan Fox is a sound and light installation that uses copperalloy
cymbals as speakers. Sound vibrations go through the cymbal, and
arrays of super bright RGBW LEDs uplight the cymbals. The velocity of the
sound controls the intensity of the light and is mixed with programmed chases
- creating dynamic patterns and colours that will illuminate the forest.
Thought provoking conversations and debates will also take place over the
three days. Speakers include keen rambler, writer and broadcaster Stuart
Maconie who will be talking about his book The Long Road From Jarrow.
Wilderness Tracks is an hour-long discussion with Timber curator BBC
Radio 4s Geoff Bird. His guests will include comedian, actor and broadcaster
Phill Jupitus, journalist and author Laura Barton and English Anglican priest
and television presenter Peter Owen-Jones, who will each chose six pieces
of music that document their relationship with nature.
Debates will include a lively panel discussion on re-wilding – the controversial
conservation model. If you are curious to find out what it’s all about come along
and listen to some of the UK’s leading thinkers challenge what we know about
ecosystem management.
Luke Turner will be speaking about his first novel Out Of The Woods a
dazzling, devastating and highly original memoir about the irresistible yet
double-edged potency of the forest, and the possibility of learning to find
peace in the grey areas of life.
Timber is all about engaging with nature and relaxing. There are a number of
events and ambient activities across the site that encourage visitors to do just
this, including forest bathing, Reiki, massage, laughing yoga and
Wonderlandia’s traditional, wood-fired red cedar hot tubs in the Woodland
Spa.
Visitors, wanting some quiet time are invited to chose a book from the
Woodland Library, which will be open all weekend offering a selection of
fiction and non fiction reading, all inspired by nature. Under the cover of trees
there will also be a Woodland Cinema with an enlightening programme of
nature-based films.
There will opportunities to get moving with sessions of Bhangra Tots,
Bollywood Dancing Workshops, Maypole Dancing and Flat Footing a style
of improvised percussive dance from the Appalachian mountains in the South
Eastern United States.
A carefully curated food and drink offer with partners Creative Countryside
includes the opportunity to enjoy vegetarian fire pit cooking. A demo by
author, artist and environmentalist Tiffany Francis will help you to discover
what summer plants are best to forage and cook with.
Perfectly Edible, a community organisation based in Leicester, will be cooking
up a storm, creating a Binner Party – a tasty two course meal made from food
that would have otherwise have been sent to landfill. With more than a third of
all food produced globally, going to waste each year Perfectly Edible are on a
mission to reduce this. They create healthy meals out of surplus food that they
intercept.
Children will find plenty of opportunities to play. The Giant Marble Run will be
suspended in the trees courtesy of Twisting Space, who created the
monumental structure from rhododendron. A unique woodland playground,
Hammer and Chisel will be under the supervision of forest play experts. Young
people are invited to come along and create their own world using pallets,
ladders and ropes to create dens, secret spaces and walkways.
Timber is collaboration between the National Forest and Wild Rumpus, an
award-winning arts organisation, specialising in showcasing arts and culture in
the natural environment.
They are working in partnership with a number of organisations including
National School of Forestry at University of Cumbria, who will be teaching
visitors to measure trees with lasers and hugs. The Met Office will be on hand
providing daily weather forecasts and visitors will get the chance to talk to
meteorologists and find out more about their climate stories project.
For more information on the full programme visit http://timberfestival.org.uk
Tickets for Timber can be found at timberfestival.org.uk/tickets/
Follow Timber Festival at @timber_festival,