Date: 27th February 2016
Location: Brighton
Some festivals are meant to make you think and some offer a sensory overload; but the most loved and the most enduring are the ones that bind us closer together in a special community experience. Little Way, the latest addition to Brighton’s festival calendar, definitely belongs to the latter category. Founded and curated by two art students, Philippe Nash and Harvey Herman, Little Way incorporates visual arts alongside live music. An alternative to brash headliners and banging bass, it is a festival where discussing what you’ve just seen and heard is as important as the bands and art installations themselves. And it’s all happening in an old church that has been transformed into an emerging multi-use community centre, an experimental co-work space and an incubator of projects and ideas.
The musical line up for this inaugural festival is made up of mixture of local talent like O Chapman and Louis Walkden, playing alongside established acts, such as Lost Map’s Rozi Plain and a Scottish BAFTA nominee Adam Stafford, who is about to release a follow-up to his hugely successful second solo record Imaginary Walls Collapse. It’s all about creating intimate sets from artists that don’t only entertain, but challenge our perceptions of what a festival could be.
While we are not sure if any of the instillations are designed to have religious significance, we know that Little Way is inspired by Saint Therese of Lisieux who was canonised not for producing heroic acts but for performing many small acts a day that confessed her love of God. And true to their mission, Little Way is putting on many small acts of artistic beauty rather than relying on big names and expensive spectacles.
Philippe Nash and Harvey Herman said: “The basis of Little Way is to develop a music festival that is intentionally simple in form, and has the fostering of new connections and interactions as its focus. Held at the tail end of winter, and entirely under one roof, the day is really an opportunity to gather together and deliver something of a shared home to everyone involved. We want to encourage a sense of a family which can grow and take new forms in the future.”
Music, literary adventures and art aren’t the only things on the programme. Food is provided by the Real Junk Food Project who will be serving Mexican food, including vegetarian, vegan and gluten free options all made from salvaged food. Drinks are sourced from the Old Tree Brewery, a botanical brewery that funds edible landscapes and regenerates forests through stewardship and tree stock replenishment. Little Way’s drinkable line-up includes quality ales, botanical cordials and soft drinks, such as sea-buckthorn champagne, spiced plum cordial and nettle beer served on bars made from old church pews that used to occupy the venue floor.
Tickets are available from the Little Festival website.
Price: £15 advance / £20 on the door / Free for Under 12s (advance only)
