Occupy Festivals

In early June Occupy activists joined festival enthusiasts and campaign groups in Somerset to collaborate in the creation of a ‘Tin Village’ at the Sunrise festival site. Over the summer Solstice weekend, Tin Village existed as a temporary, self-sufficient, co-operative community within the festival – a community based on a radical egalitarian and environmental ethos. As veterans of temporary encampments and strongly in favour of putting people and planet before profit, the Occupy crew were welcome inhabitants of the Village, where they encouraged and facilitated discussions about creative alternatives to the failing, corrupt, unjust systems we currently live by.

Occupy London has also been offered a space at Latitude Festival, 12-15 July. Tent City University will be sited in the Faraway Forest, providing a venue for workshops, speakers, music and performance. An information tent, similar to the one that ran daily for four months at the St Paul’s Occupy camp, will provide a space for outreach and informal discussion.

On the first weekend in August, Occupy will be at The Green Gathering near Chepstow on the Welsh borders, ‘joining the dots’ between the economic and environmental crises. Through performance and poetry, activists will explore the pathologically anti-social behaviour of multinational corporations, while demonstrating creative methods of getting our voices heard. Occupiers will also be facilitating festival assemblies, sharing skills and hosting campfire debates.

For more information about these festivals visit: www.greengathering2012.co.uk, www.latitudefestival.co.uk and www.sunrisecelebration.com

By Emma Fordham (@emweirdigan)