Greenbelt’s Creative Director Paul Northup shares some personal thoughts on behalf of the festival in the wake of Jason Arday’s tragic death. This blog is an abridged version of an email newsletter sent to Greenbelt Angels on Monday 17 August 2026.
Jason Arday rang and emailed me on 17 July 2026. It was a Friday. My day off. I confess that, as I didn’t recognise the number, I didn’t pick up. Later, I checked my voicemail and got his message. He’d emailed, too. He was his usual, gentle self, but he was also clearly anxious.
People were weaponising things that he’d said in his 2024 Greenbelt talk against him, he said. Could we remove the talk – and his profile – from our website, he asked? (More widely, he said that the last three-and-a-half years had been extremely difficult. And that he’d faced a relentless and vile campaign to discredit him professionally and personally.)
His tone was a strange mix of desperation and calm. I did as he asked immediately and emailed him straight back to let him know. His speedy reply will haunt me always:
Thank you very much for your support. Your prayers would be hugely appreciated Paul, it has been hell. I hope you are well, my friend.
Like most of you, I have watched in horror at what has unfolded over the following weeks.
I have read the heartbroken reflections of Greenbelt speakers like Jolyon Maugham and Chine McDonald. I have re-read the title and blurb from the talk Jason gave at Greenbelt in 2024:
Feed the Faith. Starve the Fear.
Marvin Hagler’s mantra has long fuelled Jason Arday’s belief that love and hope are what we most need to reconnect with one another and face our challenging times.
I have wondered whether we at Greenbelt were just as guilty of ‘using’ Jason then – as he has been used ever since? Platforming him for all he represented more than for the gentle, beautiful, flawed, loving and vulnerable man he was?
I can think of little else. I’m sure many of you feel the same.
In related news, staff at Jesus College Cambridge contacted me on 7 August 2026, regarding Sonita Alleyne speaking at the festival. The first Black female Master of a Cambridge College, Sonita was due to be in conversation with Chine McDonald about her work in that role – at the intersection of so many of the cultural debates about racial justice, colonialism and deep-seated white institutional power.
Sonita’s college staff were concerned for her safety in the light of the media frenzy around Jason. Cambridgeshire Police had questions for us about how we were to keep her safe.
I wrote back explaining the ways in which we put plans in place to ensure that our high profile guests are kept safe. I gave all the assurances I could, as quickly as I could.
But on Tuesday of last week (11 August) Sonita’s PA emailed to confirm that she had decided to pull out of Greenbelt. While gutted, I completely understood and respected her decision.
(We now also know that Anthony Reddie has decided to withdraw, too, unsettled as he is by the death of Jason Arday and finding himself the subject of unwelcome media attention.)
What a state we’re in. When speakers don’t feel safe to come. (And when, sometimes, festivalgoers don’t feel safe when certain speakers do come.)
I listened to yet more Greenbelt speakers, Robert Beckford and Steve Chalke, on the Sunday programme on Radio 4 at the weekend (16.06.26), and they touched a nerve that went wider and deeper than the unspeakable tragedy of Jason’s death.
They talked about how a culture without any chance of redemption is one that is doomed to break down in bitterness and blame. They invoked the old Biblical notion that judgement without mercy is morally bankrupt.
The thing that so many of us want to see at Greenbelt – a space where people can come together in these vexatious times and, despite their disagreements, find common ground and common cause – feels so far away right now.
All wars have casualties – whether military or cultural. And it’s often the most vulnerable who pay the highest price. Not least because of his neurodivergence, Jason was a vulnerable person. Being made a Cambridge professor didn’t miraculously mean his vulnerability vanished.
It feels as if we’re in a new place now, where the everyday cruelty of our discourse has lost the guardrails that we should be able to instinctively trust to be in place: the shared humanity that binds us, instead of the inhumanity that breaks us.
We talk about wanting to make room for counter-cultural and radical hospitality at Greenbelt. But at every turn, we meet barriers to what feels like it should be such a natural and human thing to do. Leaving us feeling anything but counter-cultural.
Social and mainstream media have fueled our cultural delight in outrage and polemic. Pushing us to pick sides; revel in the sport of humiliation. So much so that in a summer when the world is – quite literally – on fire, Jason’s became the only story in town.
There is and will be so much to unpack about what has happened to Jason. But for now, on behalf of the festival, I send our heartfelt sympathies and prayers to Jason’s family and friends at this desperate time.
And in the meantime, let’s commit ourselves to be that community, to make that space we still trust can – and must – be possible. Where, as Frank Turner sang on the mainstage at Greenbelt back in 2019, we might: “Be more kind my friend, try to be more kind.”