We’d love to hear your Big Tent stories - was it Phil Kay singing with his army of kids, the Chipolatas, having mussels and wine in the sunshine, getting your face painted, taking part in the debates?  

Who won the battle of the headliners, King Creosote or the Peatbogs? Who was your favourite international act?

Let us know what you thought of it all - the food, the entertainment, the venue, the camping, the free bus, the atmosphere, the parking, anything. We welcome any feedback on how to make things better and better.

Hope always lives behind the headlines of course and theatre group Grassroots Zimbabwe will be bringing its Zimbabwean experiences to share with the audience and participants this weekend at the Big Tent Festival in Falkland. During a full weekend of performances the troupe from Bulawayo in Zimbabwe will articulate issues related to migration and refugees, as well as citizenship. The company will be singing, drumming, dancing and dramatising the concept of globalisation, and challenged the Big Tent audience to reflect on globalisation: is it a living reality or just a fiction?

Grassroots are no strangers to Scotland and have put on performances at the Edinburgh Mela and at the Scottish Parliament, as well as running workshops in schools and community centres to promote cultural awareness and confidence building, and discussion of land and citizenship issues.

Grace Nicol who represents Grassroots in Scotland commented “Over the years a strong relationship has developed between the people in Scotland and Zimbabwe. Friends living in Scotland have visited Zimbabwe to take part in an outstanding programme - the Sanganisai Children’s Festival - which brought together more than 3,000 people from rural areas. The festival’s main focus was health education including HIV/Aids and TB”.

A special workshop on Zimbabwe is to be announced - as well as the scheduled performance of Grasssroots Zimbabwe - 3.00 on the Saturday / 5.15 on the Sunday (main stage).

More can be found at www.grassrootstheatre.com. Contact the UK co-ordinator E-mail:

The Big Tent team won the Fife Partnership Excellence Award for ‘Promoting Sustainability’. The Fife Partnership Excellence Awards are a biennial awards scheme set up to recognise and celebrate the creativity, innovation and performance of teams across Fife’s community planning partners. The partnership is made up of Fife Council, NHS Fife, Fife Constabulary, Scottish Enterprise, Skills Development Scotland, Fife’s colleges of further and higher education and the voluntary sector. This year 75 applications were received, all hoping to be short-listed or nominated for one of the seven prestigious awards.

The Big Tent Festival is announcing a ‘Food Village’ at this years event – a temporary display of all that’s best of local organic fare teaming up with chef Christopher Trotter and a host of the very best producers.

From school dinners to free range chickens, food miles and locally sourced seasonal vegetables, something seismic has been happening in the way we think about food. Sales of organic food are booming and growing faster than anything else we can eat and Britain’s shoppers are spending more on organic food than fish. So what’s cooking? One man who should know is Mike Small, the Programme Director of The Big Tent, Scotland’s Festival of Stewardship. Mike and his wife Karen joined forces with some friends at the beginning of this year and launched the Fife Diet. The initiative caught the imagination of both the media and local people and there are now over 200 volunteers who are shunning air-freight goods and trying to live on a diet of food that is largely grown and produced from within their area.

“The Fife Diet was inspired by a bunch of people coming together at last years Big Tent, Scotland’s Festival of Stewardship” said Mike, “Ordinary people who had become increasingly concerned about a seriess of issues concerning food. Processed junk marketed at kids, prawns being flown around the world and then back again, animal welfare. We thought rather moan about it, we should find out and see if there was an alternative. That’s essentially what the Fife Diet experiment is all about.”

Along with his colleagues, Mike is working to put the finishing touches to Scotland’s biggest eco festival, The Big Tent, which takes place on Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th July. A big part of Big Tent this year is going to be about food and the organisers have teamed up with local chef and food writer Christopher Trotter to put together a real feast, stuffed with the very best in local, organic and seasonal produce to buy and taste.

Christopher Trotter - a chef of some 25 years has worked in Michelin starred restaurants in England and France as well as working in Switzerland and has always been a fan of sourcing fresh local produce, is one of the organisers of the Food Village: “People are always asking me what is the secret to cooking a really good, wow, dish. The answer, pretty much the world over is to start by using really good, quality produce and here is the thing. 99.9% of the time that produce will come from local farmers and producers. What’s exciting here in Scotland is that we are bursting with quality all around us and in Fife here, we really are truly blessed”.

His distinguished chef colleagues from the world famous restaurants in Fife happen to agree with him. Geoffrey Smeddle, has cooked for the great and the good at Fife’s celebrated ‘Peat Inn’, whilst Craig Miller has tickled the pallets of the worlds most discerning diners who come to eat in his ‘Seafood Restaurant’ at the home of golf in St Andrews. Both will be working at the cooking demonstration tent at Big Tent along with Craig Mellor and Darin Campbell from “Tasty” in Newburgh.

Championing the local producers displaying there fabulous produce at the event will be Puddledub Pork, Beef from Jamesfield farm in Abernethy, Carnie Fruit Farm, Cupar and Pillar of Hercules organic vegetables of Falkland. There will be Anstruther cheese and Leven ice cream and Kinross chocolate. Fish and wine and beer, venison as well as bread and home baking, proving that the larder in Fife is as vibrant and delicious as those celebrated in France, Italy and Spain by our continental cousins.

So Big Tent grub will be different from other festivals: gone are the greasy hamburger vans and stalls, replaced with real local grub, an organic spit roast, venison burgers from Auchtermuchty, fresh mussels cooked before your eyes, smoked salmon from St Monans, baked potatoes, organic wraps and salads.

There is wine tasting and expert matching advice from Luvians of Cupar and an Organic beer and malt whiskey tent provided by the Black Isle Brewery.

All this for an admission price of £8 per Adult and kids under twelve go free must surely make The Big Tent, Scotland’s Festival of Stewardship the most value for money event in the UK this summer.

Recent iTunes “download of the week” artist King Creosote and hugely popular music festival dynamos The Peatbog Faeries will light up the music stage at The Big Tent Festival, Scotland’s Festival of Stewardship which takes place in Falkland, Fife over the weekend of 26th and 27th July 2008 by the Orchard of Falkland Palace under the Lomond Hill.

Music has always been part of the Big Tent but this year the festival cranks it up a gear. The confirmation of headline acts of King Creosote (a.k.a. Kenny Anderson) whose latest album has enjoyed astonishing critical acclaim together with The Peatbog Faeries, one of the most electrifying and sought after bands on the UK’s summer festival circuit underlines the Big Tent’s emergence as a credible cultural event as well as a showcase and debating forum for those involved in the environment movement. This years line-up also includes international acts such as Grassroots Zimbabwe, Voces del Sur and Moishe’s Bagel.

“Big Tent is still at its heart a stewardship festival now with a great music line up, not another music festival with a green makeover” comments Programme Director Mike Small.

Good Grub

Everybody knows the best and worst thing about festivals is the food. The Food Village organised by top chef and food author Christopher Trotter will feature the freshest local and organic food from local food producers including a vegetarian café, Fife’s newest cheese, Fife ice cream and crucially fresh organic beef and burgers cooked on the BBQ. The Black Isle Brewery Tent with its gallons of organic beer and sublime malt whiskeys should provide a more contemplative setting for those who like to explore deeper and more tranquil things in life.

Saturday Lineup includes:

Nuala Kennedy and the New Shoes
John Coletta
Allergy
John Langan
Bosie (Fiona MacKenzie)
Dave Donnelly
Fraser Fifield and Graeme Stephen
Bevvy Sisters
Abdou (Carter USM)
B Raymond and the Voicettes
Chipolatas
Grassroots Zimbabwe
King Creosote (and the Fence Collective)

Sunday Lineup includes:

Drummond Community Big Band
Voces del Sur
Sharon King
Sorren McLean
Frank and Walters
Chipolatas
Grassroots Zimbabwe
Moishe’s Bagel
Peatbog Faeries

Big Tent, Scotland’s Festival of Stewardship officially arrives among the
big boys of the summer festival circuit with recognition from The Guardian
which lists Big Tent as one of the premier folk events in the whole country.

Mike Small, Programme Director, commented “We still like to think that we
are an environmental festival with good music not a music festival that has
been given a green makeover!”

Read the full article on Guardian.co.uk