It’s the moment when your tyres stop touching the road and your feet touch the grass. The moment when flags and giant tents fill the horizon, the sky opens up and your heart settles with a quiet, contented excitement. You are here. You are in The Field. Your festival family arrives and your temporary community builds around you. You are once again, and for the last time, in the place where music and stories will fill you: Towersey Festival.
For many in the extended Towersey Festival family, The Field has become shorthand for describing the history that is the festival. A story told over 60 years in the countryside of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. This year, the final chapter of the festival was written as the event dressed up for one last glorious hurrah. Even as the book closes, the cherished memories it contains convey why Towersey and events like it are essential parts of the festival community.
The Towersey Festival began life in 1965 as a gathering of friends, family and artists in a back garden. Its aim? To raise funds for new toilets at the community centre of a small Oxfordshire village called Towersey. Throughout its 60 years of existence, the running of the festival has largely been a family affair (almost like Dynasty(but with beer instead of oil, songs instead of shoulder pads). It was originally set up by Denis Manners MBE and Louis Rushby, who ran it year after year until passing the baton to Denis's son-in-law Steve Heap in 1974. In 2019, the third generation took over via Denis's grandchildren Joe Heap, Kathy Mowatt and Mary Hodson.
Towersey’s programming grew out of that backyard and into something extraordinary, introducing generations of festival-goers to art and culture from around the world through a programme that extended beyond conventional offerings. Here you could hear Cajun music, watch traditional clog and sword dancing and then learn the dance steps yourself from the very musicians who had just performed them. Artists such as The Unthanks, Bellowhead, Martin Carthy, Billy Bragg and long-time festival patron Roy Bailey shared space with musicians from Brittany, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Bulgaria and several African nations. Entire children’s programmes and performance spaces such as The Nest, where young musicians were supported to develop their own musical traditions, filled stages with costumes and sounds that presented a world beyond the everyday.
Beyond music and dance, the festival has long cultivated traditions within the Towersey community itself. There were willow lantern-making workshops and Knit and Natter groups where experts in the dark art of spinning passed on their knowledge to acolytes eager to create their own crocheted wonders. At this last Towersey Festival, you could try your hand at blacksmithing, woodcarving, medieval dancing, archery or axe throwing – and even join a choir for the weekend! This was one of the most charming features of Towersey – filling your day between performances by learning new skills and crafts, all while expanding your circle among the thousands of attendees.
Like other festivals, Towersey had a lot of moving parts, which it managed to keep moving by creating a community at its core in a tribe of event-running volunteers. In exchange for a ticket, these vital Towersey stalwarts were members of the affectionately named Towersey Wombles, tasked with meticulous site cleanliness; the Loo Crew, who made sure you never ran out of toilet paper at a campsite; the ticket controllers at the gates; and the teams working behind the scenes helping the artists. People rejoined the same stewarding teams year after year, growing friendships and putting down deep roots in their temporary communities.
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