07 Genevieve Christie on the cultural and environmental values of a free-festival at the coast

In her home in central Suffolk, First Light Festival director Genevieve Christie chats about the reinvention of Lowestoft around the free festival held at the summer solstice. Once famed fishing town, then seaside resort, like many coastal places Lowestoft had struggled to invent a third way for contemporary times. It is the place in the UK where first light appears, and the idea of first light led to the establishment of the summer-solstice free festival on the South Beach and promenade. First Light works on the idea of place as an asset, on creating pride, on bringing all people together. Says Genevieve, “It has to be free.” Regeneration is a story with “a long arc.”

Genevieve recommends Gardens of the British Working Class by Margeret Willes.

And A Tonic to the Nation by Hugh Casson, Director of the 1951 Festival of Britain. Casson says, “The real achievement? It made people want things to be better, and no was taught to hate.”

Genevieve’s recommended action: “Be interested in things be curious. Look and listen.”

First Light Festival (20-21 June, 2026): https://firstlightlowestoft.com/ 

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027. It is called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformative Stories for Climate and Nature Recovery."

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

In Central Suffolk, at Parham near Framlingham, and I'm at the home of Genevieve Christie. It's a real pleasure to see you again, Genevieve. And we're going to be talking about cultural change and ideas of creating new forms of public realm festivals and activities of that sort. One of your um great creations has been a free festival in Lowstoft, which is why I happened also to go to school, so it's a kind of old old hunting haunting ground, I suppose you would say. So tell us a bit about how the festival came to be set up, and um uh that's uh an amazingly big public realm thing. You know, it wasn't something just for a few people, it was something for a community as a whole, wasn't it? Yes, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 0:59

I mean it is, it is. Um it grew out of the publishing work because um doing the publishing led us to then producing some literary festivals in this more sort of East Suffolk uh area where there's Alburgh festivals, Snape Maltings, you know, that kind of um already I would say cultured um demographic to some degree. And we uh we were able to add value in a way in a literary sphere through producing some interesting festivals that we called Flip Side, and um and that had grown out of the publishing business. And while we were doing that, I became very interested actually in the the sort of children's um literature side of things, maybe because I had my own young family, and I did a piece of work where I wanted to see what the sort of uh literacy levels were like in Suffolk, and I got a grant, um, and that work took me to Lower Stoft. In fact, some people sort of said, please go to Lower Stoft because there's such a sort of lack of provision, a low offer culturally for the people of Lowestoft. And so I went to Lower Stoft. I'd only ever been really, you know, for things like the orthodontist, and it's quite well known for its dentistry, I think, and I knew very little about it, um, but it wasn't very far away, uh, up the A12, and then I went there properly. Um, and I couldn't really believe how different it was from the environment I was living in in Suffolk. It's a it's a big town, it's the second biggest town in Suffolk, it's got over 70,000 people. Um it had wonderful and has wonderful people who have been doing a lot of work, uh sort of holistic work, for the quite high percentage of people who live there who suffer all sorts of deprivation. Because probably, as many people know, Lowestoft is one of those seaside towns that had a whole history and life linked to the fishing industry. It had merchants' houses and chandleries and ice companies and a vibrant, wonderful. Exactly, a place where you know the railway sort of came to Lowest Oft and trains would take carriages full of sort of fish to big cities, and it was a prosperous place, but all of that had started to diminish um at the end of you know the last century, probably from the middle of the last century.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

So end of the herring was the early 60s, really. That's when they were dead gone from the sea by then. And that that a bit like kind of mining towns in the north or rust belt towns in North US, or former models of success fall suddenly, abruptly, very often.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Plenty of signs that that's going to happen, but but our responsiveness is often slow. But then how do you reinvent a new way of seeing the world?

SPEAKER_00 4:38

That's right, and then you see families, people who are nostalgic for a past that can't be reclaimed and haven't really got a stake in the future, and that's what I saw. And linked to that was um also low levels of uh educational attainment, um, poor health, uh, poor living conditions. And um I went into a lot of schools. I was connected brilliantly by some really good sort of community activists, two sort of key people who were working in the town. And out of that, we did one of our flipside festivals, partially in Lowestoft, and um we decided that we would just do a free day in the middle of the town, in the pedestrianised sort of high street, and we put a big tent up in the middle of the high street, and we had very simple activities, things like shadow puppets, um, just nice kind of easy, uh interactive kind of arts activities. We hooked in with the theatre there, which is called the Marina Theatre, and I think we did a bit of beatboxing there, and with the library, we brought some writers in, and it was a huge success. People were really bemused, they didn't really know what we were doing, but because it was free and they had to walk through a tent, it sort of engaged by default, and what we saw was a real appetite, particularly with children and parents. Um, we were also shocked by seeing a lot of people who were walking with walking aids and you know, um, obviously living an impoverished life and wouldn't have the means, you know, when they're struggling to get by, to probably engage in the sort of cultural activity that many other people were able to do. So that really wetted my appetite to think I live 45 minutes from this place and I'm living in another world. Um, my children are in a state school, but they're in a state school with an orchestra and a library. And why am I not seeing this in this place? Um and so I wanted to do more and more there.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

And it's worth footnoting a little bit that that um uh just just for for the sake of listeners and viewers, is that that dealing with coastal communities in the UK who have seen decline, sometimes heavy industrialization was their model, and very but very often it was fishing-based. And then it was visitor-based who also disappeared from the 1970s onwards as people went to other places and they lost their allure. That there hasn't been an answer found. There have been all sorts of commissions on coastal communities and you know, rescue plans that haven't been seen through, and House of Lords wrote a big report on coastal communities 2019-ish. 800 pages, no solutions. You know, just a litany of kind of problems. So the the the the institutional response has almost been to stop at that diagnosis that you were just mentioning, but you then went on to kind of do. I mean, it hasn't it's still ongoing. It's still ongoing, it's still ongoing, but yes, that creative bit then follows from there where you go, ah.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Who's gonna do something about this?

SPEAKER_00 8:13

And I think you when you have that sort of approach, um starting small is quite a good way to go. And we I started fairly small. I I thought, well, I'll do some work in schools, and one of the projects that I did was around sport and poetry. Because, just like you've been saying, with the sort of um reduction in domestic tourism which Lowestoft suffered, uh it was seen that people in the town, although they have the most beautiful beach, were turning their back on their own coastal environment, that actually the coast didn't really become or mean anything in their lives. It was just where they were. And of course, when you go there as somebody who doesn't live there, and you think this is the most incredible resource and sort of life-giving force that you that you can live beside, albeit also a place of danger, and you know, historically um somewhere that was, I suppose, relied on and feared, perhaps in equal measure. Um but when we when I did that small project, um, and it was around, it was 2016 actually, so when it was the um Rio Olympics, uh I was able to bring in a wonderful young poet, Joseph Curlio, who went on to become the children's laureate some years later, and Paralympians, and we just did a sort of small project in schools where we commissioned Joseph to write a poem about parkrun because that was starting in the town. And um all the schools then kind of got involved in poetry around the idea of sport, and then these amazingly inspiring Paralympians came into schools and talked about aspiration, ambition, exercise. Um, and it was a really exciting project, and we had an incredible response from the schools, and of course, that then led into thinking about other things. Um, and we did another project which we called Watertight Words, and that was around flooding in the town. So Loistoft has been flooded twice dramatically. Um, there were the fifth floods in the 50s, the most famous 53, and then in 2013, another big flood. Super high tide, yeah, exactly. The surge, really, wasn't it? And and um and so it was very real actually, even though the flooding and surges sort of come into a more industrial part of the town, it affected everybody. And so the Watertight Words project was again really with schools and community groups to think about what it meant to people to live in a place that is on this vulnerable edge, really.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

And which which, as you've already said, is socially vulnerable and historically vulnerable as well as weather, climate, change vulnerable as a kind of another angle to this. But there's a lot of things stacking up and run time.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

There are. And then what we were able to do with that project was we took the words that were generated. We worked with fantastic poet Dean Parkin, who knows Lower Stoft Inside Out and comes from there actually. And the words were then uh put onto um boards that filled the windows of the defunct town hall in the north of the town, which had been standing empty for a long time. So all of these words to do with fish and things like that in the windows. And that was an interesting element of the project because it connected us into an asset of the town in a way that was redundant. But the idea of working in place and with physical uh assets, I suppose, or you know, parts of the heritage of the town, and the town itself and the town's geography started to become something that I was interested in.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

And do you think that's a way that's a I hadn't really thought about that this way. There's something about the specificities of place. So there's Lovostoff's history, the fishing and the and the domestic visitors, um, and as hence first light, the most easterly point in Britain. Um, so if you if if one starts to deal with the unique assets of a particular place, actually that can lead to the to the building up of pride, which is something that's beaten down through long periods of social inequality, job loss, opportunity, aspiration. But if you can go to those assets and use them to create a different way of seeing the place, that's a starting point for some people.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Absolutely, and that's exactly what what we then did. There was um a sort of energy in the town at that point, in like 2018, I think to do actually with councils kind of being realigned and some new thinking going on. And there was some thinking about trying to um improve the physical kind of design of the seafront. Again, looking at this sort of lack of engagement really that people were having with their own town and their own beach. And as part of that, I was pulled into some meetings around design, and I met someone called Wayne Hemingway, who um I heard of because he was a fashion designer at one point and had a company called Red or Dead, and and then I read, you know, that he had a design company. And through conversations with him and with the council around the sort of physical regeneration of the town and plans for it, and a parallel conversation was conducted around how you have to animate a place. Yeah, you can't just, you know, do wayfinding or renovations, you have to think about how people actually can operate and interact. And that is when the idea for something that would be about community coming together and trying to make a more cohesive community started to sort of generate. And at that point, the narrative around Lower Stoft was still quite negative, and it is, you know, the sort of end of a line, really. Literally, yeah. But that was the sort of narrative. Why would why would you go there? And you know, it it is the end of a line. There's there's there's nothing beyond it. Where's also the most easterly place in the whole of the UK, and that realisation that that Lerostov was sort of in a way shining this really you know great fact, um, hiding it, I should say, um, not shining a light on it. Um, you know, we thought, gosh, this is especially Wayne, you know, being sort of branding person. It was like, well my goodness me, this is you know, why is everybody talking about this wonderful fact? And then coming up with the name First Light really helped because it is where the first light comes. And it immediately gave us a sort of USP to think about okay, let's try and create an event that will bring everyone to this beautiful beach at midsummer. Let's let's do it in midsummer. Yeah, do it on the day of the the summer solstice as close as we can. Um, and then that gave the sort of um open door to a lot of creative thinking about what a festival like that can really have as its you know fundamental kind of framework, which for me, as the kind of artistic um curator, um as well as sort of leading the organisation now, really always comes back to the location and the geography, the sort of land, sea and sky, and what will inspire you know from that what inspires a program. Um yeah, so that that that was the first one was in 2019.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Yeah, exactly. It was good, that was fantastic, gorgeous. And the the the uh on the South Beach, as it's called, so the the beach with the last large area of sand. So there is this kind of beauty to it as it stands alone by the cliffs. Um, and I remember walking along there once, actually, one of the walks that appeared in It's Luminous Coast in the book, um, and the beach was empty and it was towards the end of the day, and there was a father with two young children, and they just got off the train, clearly from Liverpool, a strong Liverputlian accent, come right across the country. Um, and the and one of the kids said, Dad, Dad, are we allowed to go on the beach? And there was, and so suddenly it kind of brings into sort of sharp um response about what is in the public domain, what is the public realm, how are we allowed to use the commons? Do they even exist anymore? I don't even know what a kind of common area is that allows that welcomes me on. Yeah um uh so I thought that the the festival in being a free festival, I mean there's a kind of certain vibe about that in itself, on the the longest day, on the day when the sun is coming up at about four, just after four o'clock in the morning, isn't it? Um was simply gorgeous. Um so could you paint the picture of the Pagfilled Man? Because there are symbols that come with uh um obviously those these symbols change over time, but that was that was the first one, wasn't it? Yes, yes. Uh the the there's music and there's dance and there are tents and the stuff on the beach and on the cliffs, and there's all sorts of things happening. Um but there was you you very cleverly used a range of things that are going to get lodged in people's minds for forever, I think. And you know, the kites later on, and you know, there's a range of things that are used to kind of make people go, this is this is something I've never seen before, and therefore feel in some way inspired by that.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Yes. Well, um Patefield Man, um, yes, is it in a way was a sort of um something that I wanted to do because I wanted to remind everybody of the heritage of the place. And and Lowerstoft is an interesting town because often people will not say they're from Lower Stoft, they'll they'll say they're from different parts of greater Lowestoft in a way. And Pakefield is you know a part of Lower Stoft, really. It's maybe it's a parish of it. Um sorry, Lowestoffians, if I'm getting that wrong.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

I think I think it's kind of the southern end, isn't it? It's the southern end.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

People in it will feel separate, but it also but it all sort of cumbers, yes, and um, it's very beautiful, they've got a fantastic part of the beach, and it's also where some incredible archaeology's been done and discoveries of real sort of evidence of ancient humans and worked flint. Um, and I wanted to sort of remind people of that, and so I thought having a figure of Pakefield Man of like the early, you know, early humans um would be fun. And actually in 2019, which just you know shows you how, in a way, you do these things from a creative sort of um impetus, not really thinking things through all together, but we stuffed this wonderful, almost like an armature of an ancient man holding a sort of staff um with straw, and we set him alight.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

By then standing in the water.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Yeah, he was just in the shallows of the sea, and um we set him alight by shooting flaming arrows at him. There was a bit of burning man in our thinking then, and actually the very first First Light Festival was a non-stop 24-hour festival, which was hugely ambitious, but it captured people's imagination. And we had about 35,000 people come that first year, which was like, whoa, you know, this this is this is incredible that people are really excited. Um, and of course, because it's free and it has to be free, it still has to be free because it just takes away the barriers that you know immediately.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

You can come for five minutes, you can come for five hours. Exactly. Whoever you are, you can come. I mean, there's a completely different vibe.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Yes, and I think the thing that you were saying about, you know, whose beach is it in a way, um, these common areas, how do they belong to us? I mean, one of the things I was so pleased about was that um we started a sort of dawn program, so saluting dawn, and part of that we knew that things like yoga, um, and in fact, this year we're programming an Indian raga as well at dawn, but we did in 2019 with a wonderful musician called Talvin Singh. And we knew that sort of spiritual feeling at dawn would be important, and people came and they wanted to salute the sun and just do a sort of simple connection, I suppose, with the earth through very simple kinds. Of yoga. But what happened after the festival was that people kept doing it. And from the festival, a monthly and then a weekly group of people came to do yoga on the beach with the wonderful inspirational woman who did that for us in the festival. Wow. And it was absolutely wonderful, and it still goes on. And that I think, you know, that was people reclaiming their environment, connecting to it. Um, and that was yeah, fantastic for us.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Yes. I remember having a giga, a speaking gig at 2:30 in the morning and that 24 hours. It was some of the um most amazing kind of feeling doing all of that. And as you said, the the burning figure in the sea. And then the boats bringing breakfast, roam boats bringing breakfast onto the onto the shore. Um, so I think that kind of imagery does does stay with you and allows things to kind of settle into this feeling of the place. So looking looking back on that now, so we're speaking of 2026, so seven years after, it hasn't been every year because of course COVID put a halt to everything for a for a while. Um, but looking looking back over that time, uh, how how would you describe people of lower stoft's views and sense of the thing? 35,000 came in year one and um engaged in different ways, and maybe like in the high street, people are a bit puzzled to begin with because they're probably not sure if it's for them, you know, if you haven't done that sort of thing before. And it takes a while to claim it, that reclaiming and claiming is a thing, but it's also to do with agency. You know, do I do do I feel this is for me? And is it am I going to allow this in to change me?

SPEAKER_02 23:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

Um clearly the yoga people thought so because they kept going back.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

But what's the long-term picture now as we look back at this point?

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Well, you're absolutely right. I mean, I think these things take time. What happened in 2019 was that because so many people came, there was an incredible feeling of pride afterwards and confidence that, gosh, all of these people have come to our town, and also those of us who have come from the town to be part of it have seen these people enjoying our town, and so we can look at it differently.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

That's very nice.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

And that was wonderful. And then, of course, uh COVID came and uh that was difficult. That we had our own kind of interesting time with that, but in the ensuing years, uh, what we uh try and do always is integrate into the festival a lot of projects that are key to the the sort of standout moments of the festival. So we do a parade, and getting the parade, you know, up and running takes months, and you're working with multiple community groups, artists, creating costumes, we have a theme, we go into schools, we work with other organizations who maybe can talk about, you know, the the science of the theme. For example, this year our theme is the moon appropriately. There's a lot of moon stuff going on in 2026. Um, and all of those things mean that you're connecting with whether it's children, then you're connecting with their families. We do a lot of what's now called sort of creative health work, and so it's important that we're working with groups perhaps who are uh for singing and movement for people who are experiencing Parkinson's or who have you know breathing issues, asthma, lung health issues. There's a lot of good work going on in that space, and so we work with those groups, and that knits us into other organizations who are doing fantastic work with those groups, and then those organizations we work with many, many partners. We couldn't do our work without scores of partners, um, and that's brilliant. And I think a place, you know, you're you're sort of holding multiple views of things all the time, but we do know that if we weren't there, there'd be a lot of upset. Yeah. You know, I think there is a there is a pride in first light.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Yes, yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

And and it and it of course it leads on to other things. We've been doing many other things now that the the festival has led us into lots of other projects and work.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Isn't that interesting? So it's it's it's it's kind of opened up space, lots of paths, lots of different engagement, but also drawn on lots of communities, families, groups, schools that are already there. So this idea of there being lots of assets, natural, physical, human, social, within communities, even those that look at a particular time look like they're very deprived.

unknown 27:17

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

And indeed, economically may still be very deprived because a lot of places are suffering. So I don't think anybody, or I'm sure you're not saying, we're not saying that a festival is going to be the thing that changes everything, but something's got to start with all of this. And and so-called regeneration programs and renewal programs have so often failed to do anything significant for the people who live there. They might have set up a few businesses or built a few buildings, but but this is a different kind of model of regeneration, isn't it, really?

SPEAKER_00 27:52

And I think it's a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

What about a crowd? Um, so there's quite a lot of stuff in in the first light thing, something you're very proud of that may have been against the odds. So we've sort of described this as being a bit like that anyway. But is there something from your own from your own kind of experience? Maybe it's one of the projects, or maybe it's a um a particular group of kids, or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

I think I think it is one of the projects actually, and it goes back to COVID. So after we'd had that initial success with First Light, we were busy thinking, great, you know, we'll apply for grants and we're going to do, you know, the next festivals, and we were successful in getting grants and great support from, you know, public bodies. And then I can remember sitting there in March, you know, 2020, and uh everything was falling into place, and then thinking, oh, this isn't going to happen, is it? And then obviously, there was a hiatus. We were able to work with the great support actually of our funders to keep working in different ways with the community. And then in 2021, we decided that we needed to do something that was festival-like for all sorts of reasons, but as much for creative people that we were working with that had no work, um, and also for people in the town who you know needed expression and to get out and all of those things. And we created a project called First Flight, and that was a really simple idea. It was it was about urban nature, really, and it was about uh birds coming into Lower Stoff, coming into that part of uh the coast. Um, it was at the same time that um a beautiful asset actually for Lower Storf called Carlton Marshes was in the middle of being developed, and I can't remember when it opened, but it maybe it opened around that time. They were also in that difficult period. Suffolk Wildlife Trust. Suffolk Wildlife Trust. And um and my creative husband, actually, because we were all, you know, in our own homes thinking about working online with each other, and we thought about this and we thought, well, why don't we just do a really simple idea where we make a flat pack sort of bird box and we can give that to schools. Every child can have a bird box, community groups can have a bird box, and artists can have a bird box. And we will think about the birds that come to this country and migrate, you know, and that will be many of our most celebrated absolutely, and that will connect us to the wider world in this very interior sort of time, and also everyone can express themselves. And we did a very light touch sort of festival. We had some jazz music on the beach, we had a bit of dance, we had some shanty singers, everyone had to keep apart from each other, but because we were in the open air, it was fine, and we installed thousands of bird boxes on the upper promenade and um in the town, and it was really beautiful, and it was a really tough time, yeah. But actually, it's one of the things I'm most proud of.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Yeah, very beautiful, lovely thought. And I mean the things in themselves, but they're also symbolic of something very much greater, and that's a great story. That is a kind of core of a story. It's imagery, it's celebration, it's pride, but it's also telling something big from something small. Yes, yeah, so that's that's gorgeous. Um uh might sometimes slightly troubling words, but heroine or hero, or or somebody you looked up to, some or might even be a community, but um, who would you have you got a heroine or a hero that you would tell us about?

SPEAKER_00 32:20

Yes, I was thinking about it really. Um and I think most of my um people I do look up to are women, interestingly, for me. Um and and I was thinking about Jane Littlewood actually as being someone who I always admired. I'm not a theatre maker, but I I remember when I was interested in film actually, um, and the film A Taste of Honey being uh, you know, a seminal film from the 60s, and and um a social, you know, a bit like Kathy Come Home, one of those kind of social um films that made a huge impression on me. And Joan Littlewood, you know, when she did A Taste of Honey, um, her work with Brecht and how she worked with the children of Stratford in London in a way that had never been worked with before, to create some really fantastic theatre and make people rethink what theatre can be, I find incredibly inspirational. So I think she is a heroine of Morris.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

Yes, very good. Um, I'm thinking of Brett, you know, he said uh in 1939, um, in the dark times, will there be singing? He said, Yes, there will also be singing about the dark times. And that's kind of like the singing is the song, is the story, is the celebration, is the kind of coming together. And those were, you know, he's saying that from Germany, obviously. Yes. So they were dark times.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Um, and you know, however bad it looks, all we can do is come together to kind of find ways of doing things. So Joan Littlewood, excellent. A book or cultural item that you do you want to talk about, um or more than that? I brought two books. Brilliant, lovely, excellent, yes.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

Um this is a book that actually my daughter's partner um to the camera gave me. Um it's called The Gardens of the British Working Class. And I suppose um it I don't know it actually. That's well, I highly recommend it. It's by Margaret Willis, I think you say. It's not a new book, it was published in about 2015. Um, and it's a it goes back to what you were saying, really, about um the idea of common land, public realm, um, enclosure, and creativity in place. I love gardening and growing things, um, and I feel uh my most true self, I suppose, and at ease with myself when I am outside in my own garden. And I'm very lucky to have a rural garden. And this book charts the sort of um gardens of people who sat outside of uh the establishment of gardening in the earlier centuries, who were cottage gardeners, and then in the Industrial Revolution, how space was so you know sort of uh limited for people to grow and yet they managed to grow, and then taking you all the way through sort of time like post-war, post-second world war, when there was such little housing for people and prefab housing um was created, but actually then plots were bigger and people had a garden. And initially, how they would only grow vegetables if they were living in a prefab, but then as time went on they would grow flowers. It's a beautiful book. It's so I find it so interesting. Um, yeah, it's a perfect book for me. Brilliant, lovely.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

I'm reminded of um uh the space at houses, that's like the outside houses, but uh in Hull, the fishermen of Hull, um who were deep water fishers rather than herring drifter fishers um for Lovestoft, um, many of them, large number of people in um in Hesall Street in this kind of area where they were, um uh kept um doves. So they kept dove cuts. So back-to-back house outside Loo, but a place where the fishermen would come back from the horrors of the deep waters and look after their doves.

SPEAKER_02 36:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

And there was something something similar to the garden as well, you know, it's a place of refuge, but it's also creative as well, you know, which is lovely.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

And you also And I've got this other book which um which is a book called A Tonic to the Nation. Um I love the jacket, I think it's the most beautiful design.

SPEAKER_02 37:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

Uh it's a book about the festival of of Britain um in 1951, and um I've found it a source of inspiration in lots of ways. Uh, it's about all the people who were involved in putting the festival on, and then it has chapters about the different aspects of it. And um there's a section, I'm just gonna try and find it because I did. I thought I had uh put a little card in it. Here we are. I was very lucky in my life to meet several times um Hugh Cassen, who was, you know, one of the architects of the director actually of the festival of of um Britain, and he was a most charming and gracious man and obviously quite elderly when my husband and I knew him. But um there's a chapter here where he writes about being part of and at the centre of the Festival of Britain and all the ups and downs of it. And right at the end of it, there's a lovely sort of um paragraph where he basically says, Was it all worth it? And um hopefully. Well, he says, he says, was nothing left but a deserted, beaten-up building site, a tatty fanfare in Battersea Park, a well-meant piece of redevelopment in Poplar and a decorative style to be expressed in artifacts that were too spindly, too multicoloured, too overwrought. It would be easy to think so, easy and wrong. And then he sort of talks about in a way that this ephemeral festival, you know, that came and went, it did mean something. And um he says, uh, but the real achievement of the South Bank was that it made people want things to be better and to believe that they could be. It was noticeably unboastful and nobody was taught to hate anyone. Beneath the flags and the fireworks, it had, in retrospect, a spiritual quality which is good to remember. And that really resonates me and other people who make festivals, probably.

SPEAKER_02 39:32

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

That you know, you're creating this thing, it's not going to last. Yeah, it's a moment, but there's sort of more to it, and you hope part of that is um something that stays with people.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

Well, the Festival of Britain is now well known as a moment in history to kind of bring people together not long after the Second World War, and so it has kind of carried by reputation things forward.

SPEAKER_00 39:57

Absolutely, and I think you know the the design of it, the way it gave artists um a real opportunity to be expressive, to demonstrate that a country can be a creative and cultural country and be proud of that. I find, you know, wonderful. Wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

Your object. I think this is this the object.

SPEAKER_00 40:21

This is my object. Yeah. Um, it's just a little gourd grown by a friend.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

Gorgeous.

SPEAKER_00 40:27

Um, and um there's a lot to like about it, I think. I think it's a beautiful object, it's slightly odd because it's got these sort of uh blobs on it. Um, it's got wonderful colour combination, it's tactile, sits in my hand very well, it's something that is grown from seed.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

Um it's your place thing again. Yes. Of a place, come out of a place.

SPEAKER_00 40:54

It would also inspire me to think of festival design, um, perhaps conversations, you know, around food and production um within a festival or arts context. Um, yeah, so I that's my object.

SPEAKER_01 41:13

Very good. And one final word about a recommendation for what people might want to do. I mean, they can come to the First Light Festival in the third week of June-ish, you know, that's when it will be. Um so there's that bit, but there's something about we've talked about agency and kind of realizing that there's something more that we can do, but we often don't realise that we can do that. So that's to be an intermediary thing that helps us cross little that little bit of a line to feel like we can do something different, be creative, whatever. And the festival helps, amongst all sorts of other things, helps people do that. But what would you what would you say as a recommendation for what people should do, as it were?

SPEAKER_00 41:58

Um just as opposed to Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 42:01

Yeah. Well Grow more food.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

I mean, I suppose, you know, be interested in things.

unknown 42:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:09

Which I'm sure many of your guests say.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

Yeah, no, that's very good.

SPEAKER_00 42:13

But I mean, I think be curious, look, listen, um, never stop looking in a different direction. Um, you know, I I think there's so many things that I am hoping that I'll be able to learn more about and then maybe share with people. Uh, and I think that's the thing, you know, it's it's like never ending. That's the richness of life. So I would say, yeah, be open, be curious.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

Lovely. Thanks very much indeed. It's been a real pleasure having you on. Thank you.