A HUGE thank you for Rising with us!
It's now Tuesday morning, and our first opportunity to reflect on the weekend's festival. Our very first event, held at Barlow's Field, Ulnes Walton, Near Leyland in Lancashire.
Leading up to the event, we had plenty of nerves, not nerves about what kind of event we could deliver but about something that is out of our control, and that is the weather. July was one of the wettest July's on record, and the venue, who had recently held their first ever event only 4 weeks previous to ours had real difficulty with the ground cutting up when vehicles were finding their car parking spaces.
Thankfully, the weather did break up and some lovely sunshine recently dried the ground up considerably, and it was all systems go for set up last Friday.
Our marquee had already been erected, as per our previous blog post, and there was no turning back as we would have hired in the necessary rubber mattings to ensure it went ahead if necessary. However, Friday was our real setup day, and we had an incredible team of volunteers getting stuck in from this initial setup period right to the glorious end of clean up time yesterday. All the guys involved from start to finish were amazing, notably Calise and Charmagne who kept everything running smoothly from the ticket office to the cleanliness of the toilets. You guys are just amazing!
It didn't take long after we had marked out the camping areas, for the vendors to start to arrive. Like a Tetris puzzle, we worked on fitting everybody in, which turned out to be an incredible market to visit, with everything from healers to artisan stall holders, to the most wonderful food to purchase.
The PA and Sound engineers arrived on the Friday evening to set up and rig the stage and lighting. And we want to take this opportunity to highly recommend the guys from 'The Little Stage Company' who were incredibly calm, professional, funny and just plain wonderful to work with from start to finish. They even saved the day by providing an extra generator for our bouncy castle, after our original one failed. The sound from their PA was impeccable from start to finish and they were always on hand to help when needed...and always with a smile.
However the weather did change on the Friday, and we had quite a lot of rain through night, which did make the entrance to the ground soft. And we did have a few hairy moments, when cars got stuck, but as we had a wonderful community already creating a high vibe at the ground, everybody got stuck in with pushing the vehicles out of the mud.
The Sun thankfully started to shine early Saturday morning, and the ground soon dried out again as more people arrived to pitch their tents, and park their cars.
We had planned a long list of speakers and fantastic artists for both days, but to get everything started we had the wonderful Unguarded Warrior team providing early morning workshops with breath-work, meditations and cold water therapy. These guys provided a fantastic experience to all our guests, and for that we are ever so grateful.
Our very powerful talks started at 2.30pm with AJ Roberts, followed by Kali Spell, Debbie Hicks, Andy Woodward, Abi Roberts, Adam White and Fiona Rose Diamond followed by a very short break leading into the music for the Saturday with VVzyk, Daz Nez, Billy Watson, CC, Maiya, Elyse and Matt Hoy.
The following day also had a very tight schedule and everything just flowed beautifully, again starting with the Unguarded Warrior team at 11am. The very informative and powerful talks opened at 1pm with Michael Elton, followed by Chris Nicolson, Mark Steele, Dr Teck Khong and Mark Devlin. Our music opened at 4pm with local talent Rob Jones followed by Tom Byrom, Jane Fraser, Gemma Louise Doyle, Charlotte Newman, John Maguire, Tommy Colye with our entire festival ended perfectly with the incredible Mobius Loop.
What a weekend, full of love and high vibes. We thank all of you who came out to support us and to enjoy the festival and we hope you all enjoyed the experience as much as we did.