Wilderness Festival

Wilderness, a pioneering new festival of music, food, learning, literature and rejuvenation, is set to redefine the festival experience for 2011. Set among the lakes, forests and parkland of Oxfordshire’s exquisite Cornbury Estate on August 12-14, Wilderness will be an inspirational weekend for all the ages.


Curated by the organisers of Secret Garden Party and MAMA Festivals, Wilderness will be a weekend of freedom and inspiration for all free-spirited festival lovers. Performances, fireside banquets and theatrical spectaculars set amongst the stunning lakes and meadows of the ancient Wychwood Forest will set the standard for the new festival.

The people behind one of the world’s best-known and best-loved theatres, The Old Vic, will take their spin-off, The Old Vic Tunnels, to Wilderness, in their debut on the festival scene. They will deliver a program of theatre, performance and arts activities, with The Tax Deductable Theatre Company also putting on a range of shows for people to enjoy.

The festival’s gastronomical offerings won’t just be long-table dining and fireside feasts. Wilderness is delighted to welcome Skye Gyngell and her Petersham Nurseries Cafe as well as Sam & Sam Clark and their Moro restaurant as both hosts and culinary maestros of the festival’s two flagship outdoor dining experiences.

The finest names in musicianship will also perform, including Mercury Prize winners Antony and the Johnsons, Gogol Bordello, recent Brit winner Laura Marling who will perform solo, Toots & The Maytals, Guillemots and Hayseed Dixie, among many others.

There will also be an unprecedented line-up of talks and debates – from intellectual argument to educational workshops, humorous discourse to poetic declamation. Wilderness will come alive with stimulating debate, innovative visions and shared thinking from such organisations as Intelligence Squared the world’s leading forum for live debate, The Idler, the British magazine devoted to the ethos of ‘idling’ and Headspace, the meditation project who aim to demystify meditation and make it more accessible to the mainstream.

Restorative healing treatments and yoga workshops will also be on offer in the Well Being area for rejuvenation. The Wilderness Spa, set alongside the beautiful lakes, will offer festival-goers hot tubs, saunas and massages. Where else in the world can you be in a hot tub and jump straight into crystal clear lakes?

Family activities are at the heart of the festival, including nature walks and talks from the Bristol Institute of Natural History, lake swimming, boating, fly-fishing, a magical children’s area with babysitting from Boutique Babysitting and games and adventurous escapades on the front lawn of the enchanting 800-acre estate.

Tim Harvey, Wilderness Festival organiser, says: “Wilderness is a concept that, together, we’ve been planning for nearly six years now. It’s as much a weekend retreat in one of England’s ancient landscapes as it is an outdoor arts spectacular. It’s a long overdue addition to the UK’s world-class roster of summer shows and a genuinely different type of festival for all different age groups – young and old. The organisers have really focused their curatorial powers on creating experiences and activities that are designed specifically for the Cornbury Park site. In many cases, these performances and happenings just wouldn’t be possible anywhere else.

“When we started, we wanted to broaden out the established offering of most festivals and introduce many more cultural, lifestyle and artisan aspects to the event – the kind of programming that the Edinburgh Festival, Hay-on-Wye and Taste of London have become so renowned for. But the really exciting bit has been working out how these kinds of theatre, food and literary happenings could work in a place as wonderfully remote as the Cornbury Park site and the surrounding Wychwood forest. We’ll have to wait and see whether it becomes a new benchmark in the summer calendar but it will certainly be reflective of the variety and quality of the partners and talent involved.”

Early bird adult weekend camping tickets cost £99.50, Early Bird family ticket (two adults, two children) £250.00, 10 years and younger go free.

Visit wildernessfestival.com for more information.