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Playgroup Festival 2012 Review
Wednesday 10th October 2012 | Sarah
Playgroup Festival’s Energetic Celebration of Grass Roots Music and Eccentricity Fought against This Year’s Disruptive Weather to be a Storming Success.
There is something raw about Playgroup. There is no presumption, no fakery. Playgroup has striven to achieve that which has occasionally seemed unattainable for fledgling festivals recently: to be an organically grown centre for talent and still provide the full festival experience that crowds are used to. It has not just achieved this, it has basically perfected it. There is the perfect mix of incredibly talented bands, musicians, and DJs; innovative and eccentric cabaret and performances; cool interactive art and impressive installations; and fun workshops and activities.
There were many challenges this year for festivals, and Playgroup found itself in even more danger than most. Its location, the beautiful Eridge Park estate near Tunbridge Wells, would have suffered immense irrevocable damage if the festival had taken place in August as it was meant to, due to the truly ridiculous weather making the land unable to bare exceptional amounts of footfall and vehicles. This meant the organisers (incredibly environmentally aware and therefore unwilling to risk any damage to the site) pushed the date back seven weeks, to the 21st-23rd September, allowing the land time to get over the waterlogging of the earlier ‘summer’ and making it healthy enough to support the festival.
The new weekend was later in the year and so a little bit chillier in the night, and although Friday was fine (sunshine and occasional showers) and Saturday was superb (bright warm SUNSHINEEE), Sunday was a complete bloody mess (torrential unrelenting rain) The main stage was a no go on Sunday and outdoor games couldn’t go ahead – the weather really did have a damn good go at spoiling this year’s Playgroup – but neither the organisers, the artists, nor the crowd were prepared to let their weekend be ruined: the weather was irrelevant – the bars sold delicious warm mulled cider and the tents were packed out, comfy and warm, and people laughed through the soak.
In a small space there is an immense selection of tents, stages and experiences at Playgroup, and all elements come together to form some kind of exquisite, chaotic new world for a weekend. The Cabinet of Curiosities housed performance, magic, Cabaret and the like, and was a great place to sit (and occasionally blush). There was an eclectic mix of music, I was surprised by the talent I witnessed at every turn, even in the tiniest of tents. With such a variety available it was hard to experience everything and several places became favourite haunts within hours of arriving.
The Beatabet stage was like a tiny luminous kind of subtle utopia, showcasing incredible music, Halo Halo and the Cinemascopes were both fantastic atmospheric bands that wrapped their audiences up in their gorgeous sounds in here. The Playpen, the main stage, had a high calibre line-up throughout the weekend as well as great DJs, and on Friday evening Alice Russell blew the audience away on a gorgeous soulful journey with her glorious voice.
The Treasure Chest stage was a beautiful comfy tent to sit on cushions and relax to reggae and soft music during the day, and get up and move to great dancey house and electro later on. AK/DK made my Saturday in here: they put on such an exciting feverish show with their improvised electro beats on a crazy variety of instruments that they proved themselves to be one to watch, and just absolutely the most fun party.
The Lizard Stage was possibly the best place to hide out in, with pizza and nice tea for sale at the back, benches and a consistently occupied dance area, Poppy Perezz were awesome in here on the Saturday, the Harrison Brothers were cheerful and talented on Sunday evening, and The Turbans closed the tent with an amazing show, and clambered through the packed out tent to play amongst the audience as a swirling finale.
On a beautiful ancient estate half way between London and Brighton on the third weekend in September this year's Playgroup had it all, and a vibrant toy box full of costumed revellers had one of the best parties of the 2012 festival season.
By Sarah Bradley
