Sledge Blog : The Alternative Village Fete

As one of the organisers of the innocent village fete this Summer I was intrigued to hear about The Alternative Village Fete curated by UK creative and performance art production company, Home Live Art, at Theatre Square on the Southbank on Saturday 5th July. Commissioned by The National Theatre as part of their Watch This Space outdoor summer festival, this free one day event was billed as a ‘traditional village green, re-imagined for the modern age…with an eccentric urban twist’. A refreshing concept and what a fun filled colourful bag of tomfoolery and child’s play it was too!

The concrete and urban setting of the National Theatre square was transformed into an alternative village green environment complete with fake grass, fete stalls, bunting and street performers interacting with members of the public and playing with the form of the traditional village fete. Interactive arts and crafts stalls such as the carve your own vegetable sculpture or animal and a knitting stall promoting British sheep farming I Knit London whereby enthusiastic knitters attempted to knit panels to cover a large wire mesh sheep sculpture, proved very popular with young and old alike. In addition cake stalls, farm produce, and the Vauxhall City Farm filled up the cosy (if somewhat over crowded) Southbank environment. Alternative traditional fete dancing came in the form of The Bollywood Brass Band and The Wild Hunt Bedlam Morris dancers – a dark and menacing Morris side, dressed top to toe in black garments and intimidating warrior masks and swords. Not your average Morris dancers!
Performance artists mingled with the public to prod and probe the traditional fete form and challenge our preconceptions. One such artist collated video footage of members of the public performing their own country dance moves throughout the day (with their consent!) and then he physically re-constructed these moves into a whole dance routine which he performed on the Village Green at the end of the day. The Society of Wonders interpreted traditional fete games including a silent Margaret from the WI (not sure if Margaret is an up to date paying member of the WI or not…) conducting a stare out competition over a table with members of the public whilst, alongside, another actor provided a running commentary describing each and every facial expression and the meaning behind them.

Wacky stuff indeed and the public seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves too amongst all this quirkiness and eccentricity! Although full on performance artistry is generally not everyone’s cup of tea and WI cake I think we should applaud those who continue to mix it up and challenge us from the daily grind of every day life since its projects like these that remind us of our creative and playful sides that we can tend to forget as adults. As adults, we don’t tend to make time for proper innocent playtime and being playful with each other. Its events like these that remind us of our inner child and encourage us not to take ourselves too seriously.

But don’t worry if you missed this alternative village fete, the real thing is coming to Regent’s Park on 2nd and 3rd August where we have innocent playtime aplenty. There you can witness a very traditional village green complete with a town crier, village idiots and farmers, the Baldock Morris and the Old Palace Clog dancers, duck herding and dog agility, welly wanging and a good old fashioned tug of war. We’ve got the real WI selling tea and cakes as well as hosting a decorate your own cake stall. There is also plenty of amazing live music from acts such as The James Taylor Quartet, Son of Dave, Imelda May, Wallis Bird, The Correspondents and The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. You can get involved in some dancing at the Alfresco Ballroom with line dancing, tea dancing and jiving from The London Swing Dance Society. And a new feature to the fete this year is The Village Voice – a platform for spoken word, wordy comics, authors, open mic and poetry readings sponsored by 4th Estate publishing and curated by progressive theatre group Nabokov.