Festival at the Edge is a bit more unique than other festivals

The Festival at the Edge 2015

Friday 17th to Sunday 19th July 2015
Stokes Barn, Much Wenlock, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, TF13 6DB, England MAP
£105 for weekend

Last week I went to a festival and didn't see a single band. I didn't dance in a dance tent, I didn't mosh to any metal and there was no swaying to any singer songwriter. Yet still, I had a great time. Festival at the Edge is a storytelling festival. And it is, as the organisers put it, 'A bit more unique than other festivals.'

It's not that music is absent here. In fact, the festival features a carefully curated programme of musical curios: O'Hooley and Tidow are followed by Tom Kitching and band, on Friday night. And Saturday evening's concert features The Hut People, who lead you by the lug holes through a soundscape, rich and vast and colourful. But music isn't the focus here. At Festival at the Edge, you sway to the rhythm of the story.

This is never more evident than at the end of the festival day. For when the programme has ended and the venues are quiet, the folks who are still not ready for bed head over to the campfire and take turns to tell stories. Among the glow, the crackle and the smoke, and the different shades of silence in the pauses, you get a feeling of how and why this story telling thing began in the first place. It's easy to enthral is this environment, but it's in the tricky task of transplanting that fireside vibe to large, paying, plastic seated venues, that the festival achieves its success.

around the festival site: The Festival at the Edge 2015

The festival site makes this job considerably easier. It is part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest and if there was an award for Best View, in any Direction, From a Festival, then this one would be in with a very big shout. We arrive on site to the sound of recorders, bagpipes, fiddles and squeezeboxes and to the scene of clog dancing on the village stage. There are kids doing circus skills in the corner, and every now and again someone whizzes by on a Penny Farthing. There are canvas tents dotted around the place and many flags flying in the breeze. It all feels a bit medieval, in a Robin Hood in the Merry Green Wood sort of way; not so much of the death, plague and taxes. It's sit n' soak it up mellowness: The Field of the Cloth of Green.

But maybe I spoke to soon about the death, for it's a recurring theme of many of the stories here, along with love, sex, and the supernatural. The performers are skilled actors, singers and musicians, and their stories vary widely in origin. Some are local, others are global. Many are ancient, whilst others are brand spanking new, never before heard, and festival-commissioned. The experience: the lump in your throat, the tear in your eye and the shock of surprise, is more akin the theatre than to a musical concert.

The approach of the performers is a varied as the stories themselves. Some just stand and talk. They do it all with voice and gesture and, in the case of Kasper Sørenson, quite a lot of audience interaction. I catch Kasper twice. On Saturday afternoon it's The Empty Room and Other Dark Tales, all about love and death and dismemberment. It's ace. Later, he headlines the red tent with The Copenhagen Bombing-1807, a love story set amongst falling British bombs. It's a vastly more interesting history lesson than any I remember from school, and I never knew we did that.

Then you have Maria Whatton and Sarah Matthews with The Lunar Men. Here we have a velvet chair and candles to set the scene, a string accompaniment, song, and a story with truths stranger than fiction.

Debs Newbold: The Festival at the Edge 2015

Elsewhere, there are those whose approach depends on the scene. Debs Newbold, with Tales from the Bawdy Bardess, rounds off Saturday night. She tells three tales, "Beginning with Chaucer and ending with pure filth." Then, on Sunday, she offers Lost in Blue, an hour and a half of experience that is thoroughly modern, using music, beatboxing, sampling and digital, monster-sounding vocal effects. There's still plenty of tragedy though, and an ending that comes as a serious shock, even though we all like to think we saw it coming.

Simon Hayward is, according to MC Andy Harrop-Smith, a 'A man more eloquent that Stephen Fry', and he's here with Anston Line, a piece especially commissioned by the festival. It begins with a fingerpicked guitar, bringing the air of the folk club to the venue. Continuing in that vein, Simon's is a ghostly tale of a mining disaster and lost love regained.

Festival at the Edge being a little bit different to your typical music festival, it's worth devoting a little bit of thought to getting to grips with its cultural differences. Firstly, it is useful to have a programme, to make a plan and to stick to your timings. The performances have a beginning, a middle and an end, so it's best to be there for the duration, both as a courtesy to the performers and audience members, and to get the most from the occasion. If you arrive late, they'll let you in but you have the sit at the back. Everyone queues to get in. If you are already in for a previous performance, you have to get up and queue again. Akin to the classical/ jazz/ theatre world, there's complete silence during the performances and many events begin with a chorus of shushing from the audience. Generally, performances are introduced by other performers, and it's an effective way of creating an atmosphere for what is to follow.

around the festival site: The Festival at the Edge 2015

Some of the performances last an hour and a half, but time passes differently here. You won't realise that you've been sat there for so long until your bum gets sore from the plastic chair. Then you'll notice everyone else shuffling too and you'll know it's about ten minutes from the end. Cushions are recommended, and usefully, there is a stall selling mats, made from sheep fleeces, which would do the job just fine. There's a stall doing some damn fine Caribbean food too, just as a gentle aside….

Ultimately, despite not having a musical focus, Festival at the Edge is everything that a festival needs to be. It's the gathering of a good crowd. It's a chance to swap stories, to eat good food, drink good ale and to be entertained by performers who can paint pictures in your mind with no props, no set and no supporting cast. It the perfect theatre for austere times, as it was in the beginning, I guess. The best thing is, that after a weekend here you'll notice that your thoughts and your speech are sculpted in a more story-like sort of way. I'm not sure when it will wear off but I'm in no hurry. This year is the festival's 24th, so next year will be a big one. I look forward to it most earnestly.

review by: James Creaser

photos by: Ian Wright