Nibley Festivals Chris Gordon  chats to us about the festival which takes place in a gorgeous chunk of rural England.

Nibley – that sounds quaint – tell me more? 

Well I guess it is quaint in some respects. It is held in the village of North Nibley in Gloucestershire, hence the name, and it is a small chunk of gorgeous, rural England. The festival site is on a cricket pitch voted by The Daily Telegraph as the second prettiest in the country (sounding really quaint now I know but it is a stunning location!) – it’s perched high on the Cotswold Edge with views of about 60 miles in most directions. 

So it’s a small village affair then? 

Well we have grown over the 7 years we’ve been running to a capacity of just over 4,000 people. We have now capped it at that level partly because we want to preserve the lovely friendly, safe atmosphere and partly because we love our site and it’s not that big. I suppose in festival terms we are a biggish small festival (5,000 is the accepted threshold for small festivals). It could be much, much bigger – last year we put our tickets on sale 4 months ahead of the show and they were snapped up in 36 hours. Will we get bigger? Nope – we like being small and perfectly formed! 

There are hundreds of new festivals these days – are you just jumping on the festival band-wagon? 

Absolutely not! If anything we think we are hopefully at the vanguard of a whole new breed of community run, not for profit events. You are right; there are a lot of landowners (or sons and daughters of landowners) who have seen a music festival as a way of making a healthy profit without getting a proper job.

To be fair some of these festivals are absolutely fabulous, creative affairs that deserve to do well, but many are derivative events with vastly inflated ticket prices, expensive food and drink, and unimaginative band selection. I understand the need for profit (I do have a proper job – Nibley is just a hobby) and I’m also acutely aware of the massive overheads in running a festival properly, but ticket prices have got out of hand. We can keep our ticket prices down because we are all unpaid volunteers, we ask performers and contractors to help us with their fees and we ask caterers to charge fair prices for food and drink. 

Sounds like you are very passionate about this festival? 

I am – along with the rest of the committee this is our hobby and we are proud of the show we put on every year, and the many tens of thousands of pounds we have raised for charity. 

So tell us some more about the Festival?

We are a 1 day event. There are always calls for us to expand the number of days but we are already asking an army of volunteers to take unpaid days off work to set up and break down the festival site – extra days would just extend that commitment but festival goers can camp both Friday and Saturday to make a weekend of it.

We run from noon to 11pm. All the kids’ entertainment is free – we are a family event and we want to encourage families to festivals, so we feel very strongly that all ages are catered for. This year there are two outdoor stages sited next to each other and so every act will perform to the whole crowd (something that is a real selling point to musicians that are used to “playing” the larger festivals but actually they are shoved away in a distant field in an unmarked tent).

You mention acts – who’ve you got playing this year? 

We have The Wonder Stuff, King Charles and Jesus Jones as headliners. We also have Ashley Slater (ex Freak Power obviously) with his latest creation Kitten and The Hip. On top of that we have 10 or 11 other acts most of which the music literati will have heard of, be it through national radio air play, major festival appearances or supporting big bands on tours.

We are incredibly lucky that so many talented bands want to play Nibley. It wasn’t always the case if I’m honest. We’ve had to work really hard to build up our reputation as a good gig. We are getting there with major agencies and record labels getting the message that we will look after their acts – we do – we love having them.

We work really hard researching bands. What we don’t do is ring up an agency and ask them to chuck us 3 or 4 acts for £xk. Partly because we can’t throw money around like confetti and partly because we love live music – we go to an awful lot of gigs! 

So go on then give us the details for this year? 

It’s Saturday July 6^th. Tickets go on sale at 9am on  Saturday March 23^rd. Adult tickets are £23, Under 18s are £9, Under 4s are free – I told you we were good value! You can camp for 2 nights for just £20.

If you are lucky enough to get a ticket you will be hooked – virtually every band we have play at Nibley asks to play the following year and the punters are just as keen. It’s that which makes me know it’s all worthwhile.