As usual, hundreds of you completed our post-festival survey this year. Thank you!
(There’s an important footnote that explains more about how our survey respondents skew as part of our wider Greenbelt community below.)
So, what did you tell us about our last festival at Boughton House?
THE HEADLINES
94.5% of you were happy with your Greenbelt experience. 85% said it was good value for money and 100% said you’d like to “go to Greenbelt again ‘next year’.” Ooops. Sorry. (But hold on: 92% said you’d be back whenever we host the next festival. Phew!)
Apart from understandable references to mud, weather and needing more shelter, of the handful of people who let us know why they weren’t happy, our favourite two responses were:
- Because you’re a bunch of ableist self-interested exclusive yuppies
- There was nothing inspiring. Too many angry people just being angry
(We feel a new t-shirt coming on.)
On a more serious note, 28% of those ‘unlikely to return’ said it was too expensive – not just the ticket price, but the festival food once there. While we do everything we can to provide subsidised, concession and even free Open Festival tickets, it’s clear that for some a full festival experience is simply too costly.
THE HIGHLIGHTS
You rated the music and ideas programming very highly (89% and 85% of you loving those aspects of the programme respectively). Worship was also right up there in the 70th percentile.
In terms of individual artists or pieces of programming, Flat Moon got a lot of love. As did Luisa Omeilan with her God is a Woman show. Our outdoor free-play all-age installation Playshapes got lots of mentions and Tom Crowther was undoubtedly your surprise discovery on the ideas programme, with his Nature’s Echo talk much lauded.
We asked a few specific questions about the Rebel Rouser venue in particular and, although our survey cohort isn’t its main demographic, it’s still crystal clear that there’s heaps of appreciation for all that this space has become in the life of Greenbelt. People love that they discover new artists there. They love the blend of workshops by day and music by night. They were especially blown away by Claire and Joey Hinchcliffe’s session Who Will Slay the Elbit Beast. Oh, and Flat Moon. Of course. (We can’t really mention them enough, to be honest.)
COULD DO BETTER
Besides sitewide wifi, of course, well, there were other issues you wanted us to improve if we can…
The weather. Not something we can manage, of course. But our’s and the site’s preparedness for and response to it, perhaps yes. Most of you thought we and the site did pretty well all things considered. But it was clearly much more of a challenge for those with additional access needs and wheelchair users especially. One response asked us – in our site search – to be sure to choose somewhere with “less mud”.
On the tone and tenor of programming, there was definitely a thread of responses around wanting more theology and less activism (too much focus on action and not enough on reflection). It’s worth checking the footnote about who our survey respondents are in this respect. Would a younger set of respondents perhaps have asked for more activism, not less? It’s the delicately balanced festival seesaw we find ourselves on as a multi-generational gathering.
Someone also wrote: “Recently, particularly since the Church Times took over, it’s slid inexorably into a more liberal ‘inclusive’ ethos.” (We’ve not been partners with the Church Times since 2017.)
We hear the person who pulled ‘us’ up for using AI for the Beer and Hymns songsheets. Our only defence there is that we (Greenbelt) don’t / didn’t design those and the artwork came in too late in the day for us to challenge and change it. Promise we’ll work to do better in future.
There’s always lots of talk about the toilets. Not enough composting toilets. Lots of calls for the Peequals to come back. (We want that, too. They were all booked elsewhere this year.)
Someone wants us to improve the festival by holding it twice a year. Similarly, someone else wants it to last longer because “three days goes so fast”.
Surprisingly, Charlotte Church divided opinion. Some of you were wowed. Some of you were ambivalent.
Lots of you didn’t like the chair creep inside venues. Especially in The Canopy. We hear you. (We don’t like it either.)
We hear you on the comedy. Work to do there. We’re on it. (But lots of love for Matt Winning’s Solastalgia and Luisa Omeilan’s God is a Woman. So not all ‘bad’.)
And just to prove that we read all your responses, we’ve logged the call for “more campanology”. Watch this space.
WHAT MATTERED MOST
It’s always heartening to read your responses in this respect, with huge numbers of people using words like ‘spiritual home’, ‘community’ and ‘belonging’ to describe their Greenbelt experience. You also like it that you hear and encounter different stuff at Greenbelt (than, say, in your churches). We’re happy to oblige.
Always at the heart of the survey, it’s humbling to read your responses to the question “What did your Greenbelt experience include?”. So much so that we thought we’d include your responses in full because they tell such a powerful story.
- 76% of you were moved to tears.
- 93% were moved to laughter.
- 90% were motivated to take action for justice
- 66% saw or heard something unlike anything before in their life
- 73% participated in activities as a group comprising more than one generation
- 67% of you resolved to change something about the way you live your life
- A whopping 94% of you felt part of a community
- An amazing 78% had a meaningful conversation with a stranger (if only the world could be like Greenbelt, eh?)
- 77% experienced a moment of spiritual insight
- 80% reconnecting with themselves
- And 74% had an experience of God
This is the kind of stuff that makes all the hard work worthwhile, to be honest. (Oh, and Andy Burnham, if you’re reading this – and why wouldn’t you be – please make it easier and more affordable for more people to get to festivals like Greenbelt, thanks.)
GENEROUS
24% of the survey responding cohort (yes, that’s almost a QUARTER) opted to buy our most expensive ‘Supporter’ tickets*. And when asked why, you simply said:
- I wanted to provide additional support to the festival
- I wanted to help provide cheaper tickets for others
Thank you! You did just that.
(When we first introduced our pay-as-you-can-afford ticketing model – Supporter / Standard / Supporter tickets – post-pandemic, we had no idea how it would work. But because Greenbelters are such a generous bunch this new ticketing model has been a game-changer. Thank you.)
But you’re not just generous when it comes to your ticket-buying. 65% of survey respondents were already Greenbelt Angels! And 6% of those had increased their Angel giving in the past year. While 74% were also aware of our ‘Where there’s A Will’ legacy campaign and 22% of you are actively considering leaving Greenbelt a gift in your will. Now that would be utterly game-changing. Thank you.
* Across all ticket-buyers, 20% opted for the Supporter ticket. Still amazing!
LET’S KEEP IN TOUCH
83% of you subscribe to our e-newsletter Dispatches. Thank you. We’ll keep you posted on everything you need to know Between the Fields in that regular email. 64% of you follow us on various social media channels. There was unanimous appreciation for the entire recorded talks catalogue being made free. Remember, you can access the whole archive via the Greenbelt App too. Reassuringly, 75% said that you will engage with Greenbelt content online Between the Fields. (Did we mention our current crowdfunder for A Portrait of Greenbelt?)
WHO ARE YOU?
Again, check out the footnote below about who our survey respondents are.
85% describe yourselves as ‘Christian’. 5% as agnostic. 79% of the survey respondents still regularly go to church. A little over half identify as Anglican, 20% as Methodist – with Baptists and URC folk registering about 10% each. 4% of you are Quaker.
But beyond those categorisations, you also responded such that we can see you’re very open-minded, concerned for social justice, environmentally activist, and committed to inclusion. You also gave us myriad examples of the ways in which being at Greenbelt had inspired you to change things in your lives – from “playing the fiddle more” to getting involved in refugee hosting and screening the People’s Emergency Briefing in your community – and so on.
You lot are simply amazing. You are Greenbelt. Between the Fields.
Footnote on who our survey respondents are
When we say here’s what “you” told us, it’s important we qualify who “you” are when it comes to our festival survey. It’s not that we don’t value and use your feedback. We absolutely do. It’s just that the “you” in question is a particular Greenbelt cohort – and we wouldn’t want anyone to think that your responses are completely representative of our wider festival community.
Just to give you a feel for who the “you” are who have responded so helpful to our survey…
- 65% were already Greenbelt Angels.
- Their favourite venues – by a country mile – were the Canopy and Pagoda.
- 40% were aged 46 to 60.
- And 37% had been to Greenbelt more than 20 times!
This is the ‘you’ we’re talking about in this blog.