For the second year running, I spent the August bank holiday weekend volunteering with the URC team at Greenbelt festival. The URC run a café venue at the festival, working with REfUSE to turn food otherwise destined for landfill into tasty, affordable meals. The café also provides free craft activities for all ages and a programme of talks, reflections and worship under the theme “Revolting Christians”, giving visitors an insight into the URC and what we are about. We hosted a Sunday service, broadcast online in collaboration with the URC’s new online church YoURChurch, with speaker Anthony Reddie.
This year I joined the craft team and spent the weekend supporting others to be creative and talking about the URC and our themes. We made pasta jewellery (from waste pasta), loo roll bees, and pom pom fruit, among many other things, surrounded by hundreds of Kintsugi Hearts made by URC members from around the country.
I also got to enjoy some of the festival programme and my highlights included stunning musical activism from Ukrainian band Balaklava Blues and folk musician Grace Petrie, righteous fire from political commentator Yasmin Alibhi-Brown, hilarious whimsy from comedian Alasdair Beckett-King, and peaceful contemplation at Quiet Communion, led by Alex and Jo Clare-Young.
The URC also runs Greenbelt’s youth venues where Judy Harris, our Children and Youth Development Officer, and a team from across the URC offer a programme of activities for children and young people, with no adults allowed!
Greenbelt is a special place, where you can explore your faith, debate politics, develop your activism, and create and experience great art and music. I would recommend volunteering as a great way to experience the festival and meet folk from across the URC and beyond – keep an eye on the Synod newsletter and we’ll share when applications are open for next year’s festival. If you’d like to have a chat about what it’s like volunteering at the festival, please drop me an email.
See you there next year?
Megan Price – Synod Clerk
