Attracting parents – Festival for the family

Greenbelt was first held in 1974. Little did it realise that as it grew older as a festival, those coming would grow older too and they would have children. And they’d keep coming back! By 1980, with 25,000 people attending, there were literally hundreds of children at the festival each August bank holiday weekend, writes Paul Northup.

At first, the children’s programme that emerged was instinctive and organic. It gave children a fun time in a safe environment while their parents went off and enjoyed the festival. It was a babysitting service of sorts. But, gradually, the ethos that underpinned Greenbelt began to permeate the children’s programme too. Soon, craft activities were everywhere. If Greenbelt was a festival in celebration of Christian creativity, then the children’s programme had to echo that vision! Over the years the programme has evolved and its provision has become increasingly professional – well managed and well thought through. The numbers of children under ten years old enrolled in the children’s programme mushroomed to an astonishing 1,196 in 2003.

Today, the children’s work is largely co-ordinated by a specialist Christian organisation called VisionKids, based close to Cheltenham. VisionKids recruits and vets the hundreds of volunteers needed to organise three full days of activities. ‘Juice’ looks after the hi-octane programming for the five to seven and the eight to ten year-olds, while the ‘Little Beakers’ programme caters for babies and toddlers, helping them forget they’re in a field! Offering baby-changing and bathing facilities, potties and evening sessions from 7 to 10pm (as well as all-day care), ‘Little Beakers’ also get to play with the toys Greenbelt has invested in and which are cleaned up and re-used year after year. For those over ten years-old, ‘The Mix’ last year catered for over 600 eleven to thirteen year-olds with live music, drama, dance and circus skills workshops, seminars, a skateboard park, mountain biking and initiative games. The children’s area is now so big that it almost looks and feels like a mini-festival in its own right. The whole area is enclosed for safety, but there’s plenty of room for the children to run around and let off steam, as well as lots of tented venues for each age group to enjoy all sorts of activities. And besides this dedicated programming, Greenbelt has included a growing number of all-age, family events in its main programme which have proved extremely popular.

All those working with children at Greenbelt are Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checked and many of the volunteers are children’s workers in their everyday lives. Some also have experience of working with children with special needs and many have first aid experience too.

Demand for spaces in the children’s programme has grown so dramatically over the years that the systems for registering them have had to grow more and more sophisticated. To avoid long queues on site, children’s places are now booked in advance of the festival and careful entrance management means that queuing and rushing are now at an absolute minimum. But there is always room for improvement and Greenbelt learns lessons every year. As we now guarantee spaces to any parent who wants to book their child in, we have a massive volunteer recruitment programme. But all this time and investment means that the festival does have a unique family feel to it. It’s not just its Christian arts and justice bias that make Greenbelt distinctive. It’s the all-age, non-threatening atmosphere which pervades. And this is something Greenbelt guards jealously. Someone once said that we were to ‘suffer the little children’. And Greenbelt is honouring that call. Let them come. We will care for them.

Paul Northup is Acting Festival Manager of Greenbelt Festivals. t: 01242 704258;
e: [email protected];
w: http://www.greenbelt.org.uk