Cherish your festival, good folk of Moseley

Sep 4 2008 By Neil Connor

People of Moseley; just who do you think you are?

I have concluded after a day out at last weekend’s Moseley Folk Festival that you must be God’s chosen people to have something so charming on your doorstep.

I always make an effort each year to attend at least one festival. I consider it to be a crucial part of my efforts to maintain any semblance of being young of mind, if not body.

But I fear my days of traipsing down to Leeds, Reading, Stafford etc for the more corporate affairs are almost certainly over.

Not only do I almost always have the knack of choosing the event that is the most rain-soaked, I also return having spent a large amount of my cash on over-priced food and a large amount of my time queuing for over-priced drink.

There was the added annoyance at this year’s V Festival of losing my mobile phone in a rainswept field. My only comfort is that it is now probably buried in the mud and far away from anyone who would want to unblock it and sell it on ebay.

I suppose I should consider myself fortunate. One of my friends left V with a broken camera and mobile phone after he left them in the pockets of his soaked-through tracksuit bottoms.

OK, so the heavens did open over Moseley on Sunday, but it failed to dampen the spirits of a large crowd who were forced to squelch through the grass with their sandals.

And on Saturday the weather was fantastic, and what’s more, when it did rain, it was just a short stroll to one of the many pubs in the local high street.

There were many good things about the Moseley Folk Festival, in particular the music, the chilled-out crowd, the creative food and the Purity beer tent.

However, its location at the centre of Birmingham’s most vibrant suburb is what gives it the festival its charm.

There may be a handful of residents from neighbouring houses that would prefer the festival to be axed; but with a curfew not long after 10pm, it seems that a suitable compromise has been reached between the organisers and the local community. Also, there were complaints from some quarters that the stage was obscured from much of the field. But there was plenty of room down the front of the 2,000-strong audience on either of the days.

But being in the middle of Moseley gives revellers the chance to stroll away from the site and enjoy Moseley’s other attractions whenever they want a break from the festival.

There is no soggy campsite, no endless car park and no one selling wellies at £25 a pair.

Single-site urban festivals are not a new idea. Manchester held a festival at the Old Trafford cricket ground for years. In London, Finsbury Park is often used for one off events. But in Birmingham the last city festival I can remember was Sound Station in 2006.

Of course, there are a number of events held around ArtsFest and Gigbeth. But is there scope for another single-site Birmingham music festival after three years of a hugely successful Moseley Folk Festival?

Gerv Havill, the man behind the Moseley Park event, has no plans to increase capacity next year.

“I think the size of it is part of its attraction,” he said.

That is good news, but leisure chiefs in Birmingham should now be thinking whether they should look for opportunities to further raise the city’s cultural profile.

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So Helen Mirren stopped taking cocaine because she discovered that the proceeds of the drugs trade were going to Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie.

The first question that needs to be addressed is where did she originally think the proceeds were going to - the Treasury?

Imagine a situation for example of a celebrity telling people with far less wealth than themselves to give to charities and developing countries.

If we were to donate the entire proceeds of the drugs consumed by artists at this summer’s rock festivals, Britain could probably wipe out the nasty Colombian drugs trade and half the debt of a poor African country in one stroke.