Introduction

“A Year in the Making.
Three Day s to Consume.
Hard to Forget.”

Heathcote Williams

This is a Haiku that my husband’s great friend Heathcote Williams wrote about the Elephant Fayre. It is, like everything Heathcote has ever written, spot on. We work on the festival all year (in fact having just had a year ‘off’ last year, we have been working on it for two). What we hope to create this time is an event that leaves an indelible imprint on people’s minds of the best weekend of the year.

One of the great aspects of running a festival (and there are many) is the things that go on about which you have little or no idea: for example, when someone comes into the site office and says: “Can I have a table please?” Pause. “Of course. Why?” “Oh, for a séance I am having in your woods tonight.” Or perhaps you come across a masked ball at three in the morning in the middle of the maze — again, not on the programme, and thus the better for it. Or when maybe a tripped-out punter has roped a disco ball 40 foot up in cathedral-like beech trees and you come across it at five in the morning, you know the festival has taken on a life of its own. When you stumble upon happenings like these you realise you have assembled the necessary ingredients, so that festival alchemy has its own petri dish to grow in.

Last year’s [2007] hit of the festival was the One Minute Disco, on the hour every hour. Again, a spontaneous event which took place down by the St Germans estuary; the PA was the almost clapped-out stereo in a Land Rover; the track was the same one every hour — ‘Hot In the City Tonight’ by Billy Idol — which happened to be the CD that was jammed in the stereo; the speakers were stuck up on the roof, which also became a dancing podium. But by the end of the weekend over 500 people were racing down the estuary, on the hour, every hour to dance like maniacs for one minute. Like I say, hard to forget.

Catherine St Germans, founder and co-director
10 July 2009