Reading gets a Heavenly replacement for WOMAD at Rivermead

Festival organiser Melvin Benn and WOMAD's ex-artistic director Thomas Brooman have joined forces with Reading Borough Council to bring a new international music festival called Heavenly Planet to Rivermead, Reading next year on the site which was WOMAD's old home an article on the GetReading website reveals (here).

The festival will take place over the weekend of Friday 10th until Sunday 12th July 2009, and will feature two days of music before ending on the Sunday with a community event with more acoustic acts and will be aimed at families and teenagers with a cross generation appeal.

Tickets for the event which will include include camping, weekend and day passes are expected to cost less than for some other music festivals and are expected to go on sale in March or April next year.

WOMAD was held at the Rivermead site which is partly owned by Reading Borough Council and Festival Republic, for 17 years until it moved to Wiltshire in 2007 and returned to top form in 2008. Since then the town has been looking for a replacement.

Heavenly Planet is hoped to attract 15,000 people and will feature a mix of music from across the world with three all-weather stages – one focusing on local bands – and will also make use of Rivermead leisure centre.

Mr Brooman, who is now artistic director of Heavenly Planet Ltd after he left WOMAD suddenly earlier this year, explains in the article that he hopes the event would make festival goers "more positive at being yourself and having an optimistic outlook towards the planet."

He adds that the concept festival would be strongly inspired by Reading, its central location and its diversity, and the music would be "truly international but at the same time not trapped into world music."

The flavour of the festival will also take it's inspiration from the WOMAD event with Internationalist issues figuring as well as discussion, humour, debates, and petition-signing.

The council's culture and sports boss, Councillor Graeme Hoskins, explains in the article that Heavenly Planet would make an ideal replacement of WOMAD for Reading, and is quoted as saying, "It was a blow to us (when WOMAD was taken out of Reading). It was an important part of Reading. It also had an international flavour. We had been looking for a replacement for some time. We have an excellent chance to make this successful. This is exactly what people were saying they wanted."

Festival Republic boss Mr Benn, also explains his involvement, "My commitment to the town is the principal starting point. I got to know a lot of people in the town and I do understand the hurt and disappointment that was felt when WOMAD left."

The official papers proposing the festival are published today and the plan will go for approval at the end of this month. Mr Benn said a more precise plan, possibly including the first draft of a line-up, could be released sometime next month.

Although no line-up has yet been revealed, the article says that organisers have targeted Franco-Spanish singer Manu Chao, and Malian duo Amadou and Mariam.

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