Supernormal is one of those festivals into which the experience of a lifetime is squeezed

Supernormal Festival 2015

Friday 7th to Sunday 9th August 2015
Braziers Park School of Integrative Social Research, Ipsden, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, OX10 6AN, England MAP
£80 for a weekend ticket

Daily capacity: 1,000

"I realised all the experimentation in the world is no match to listening to our hearts when we are full of joy."

My friend just sent me this, she came to Supernormal, appeared in the night, slept under the stars, left in a hurry, came back again…we hang out and then I missed her for a bit, I saw her laughing and she saw me dancing and then disappeared sooner than I could tell her please stay a little longer!

She sent me her thought (above) the very next day, while I was still scraping the dirt from under the soles of my feet...I quickly latched onto this thought, and will use her words like wrapping paper to decorate the memories for this past weekend before I might forget…I have been to a million festivals, and some of those are shrouded in a thick fog of memory-loss, others I can still taste like my grandmother's cake, thick and sweet and sometimes a little sickly.

Festivals are like capsuled lives, you feel like you just had the experience of a lifetime all squeezed into one intense night: you make friends, you loose friends, you have the biggest crush, a music crush, a disappointment, you have a time when you connect with everyone around you and then you suddenly just need to be alone…well…if I could pick the festival to channel my whole life through one single weekend, it would have to be Supernormal, as the life in Brazier's Park is one of love and joy…and who could refuse such choice?

From arrival in the parking lot, people just smile at you! And the worst you can expect to feel, is the slight pain around your jaw muscles from laughing too much!

Supernormal is silly...
but it's also made of serious stuff!

For a start, it practices a real exercise in communal living, it's eco and digs deep into its tradition of self-management and anarchist practice, it is what i imagine the early burning-men and women were trying to create before they subsided into some globe-psy-trance fanfare nightmare for the privileged world traveller!

Supernormal has a true ideological backbone. It is simple and unpretentious and the beauty it creates comes straight from the heart of those who participate and bring their creative spirit to the mix, and not from the fortune raised from business acumen and set fire to with a costly pyrotechnic display... there is no main act…or at least not that I ever noticed, and visual art and music performances share a truly co-operative ground.

review by: Conny Prantera

photos by: Elyssa Iona