Scottish Alternative Music Award winners VanIves, folk artist Rachel Sermanni and Mercury Prize nominated folk star Sam Lee are the latest artists announced for Dandelion Festival, a free music festival taking place in Kelvingrove Park, from Friday 17 to Sunday 19 June.
The musicians join a line-up of Scottish and international artists including Rura, Newton Faulkner, Les Amazones d’Afrique, Darlingside, This is the Kit, Admiral Fallow, Qawwali Orchestra and Niteworks. Dandelion Festival will also host the first live performance from Scottish collective Hen Hoose, featuring Tamara Schlesinger, Emma Pollock, Elisabeth Elektra, Suse Bear, Pippa Murphy, Karine Polwart, Jayda and Amandah Wilkinson
The festival is part of Dandelion, a creative programme celebrating sustainability through community growing across summer 2022, bringing together music and art with science and technology to inspire people to ‘Sow, Grow and Share’ music, food, ideas and stories.
The Dandelion Festival music line-up has been curated by the artistic director of Glasgow’s Celtic Connections festival, the Scottish musician, composer, and producer Donald Shaw, while the talks, performances and interactive activity have been programmed by Dandelion Executive Producer Jenny Niven. Presented in partnership with Celtic Connections and Glasgow Life, artists will perform across three stages – the Pavilion, Orchard and Dandelion stages. These will be situated across a special festival site in the south of the Kelvingrove Park, next to the entrance from Royal Terrace and Parkgrove Terrace.
The festival opens on Friday 17 of June, welcoming local schools to enjoy walkabout theatre, art and science installations and special talks during the day, while the live music begins from 4pm featuring Boston indie-folk band Darlingside, followed by Scottish folk artist Rachel Sermanni,contemporary folk-Americana from Awkward Family Portraits, performance by musician, composer and beatboxer Jason Singh andset bysix-piece Celtic fusion band Shooglenifty.
On Saturday, performances begin at noon with the National Youth Pipe Band marking the beginning of festivities followed by the Glasgow African Balafon Orchestra, alt-pop group VanIves, folk trio LYRE LYRE and Hen Hoose. Audiences can enjoy performances fromAfro-Brazilian collective Baque Luar, a captivatingcombination of Sufi poetry and rich orchestral arrangements from Orchestral Qawwali, songs fromacoustic artist Lisa Rigby, while the evening includes headline performances frommulti-award winning Scottish folk group RURA, Jason Singh, BBC 6 Music favourites This is the Kit, former Radio Scotland’s Young Traditional Musician of the Year Hannah Rarity, Celtic-Electronic four-piece Niteworks from the Isle of Skye, singer-songwriter Newton Faulkner and West African supergroup Les Amazones D’Afrique.
On Sunday, performances begin at 1pm with Baque Luar, followed by jazz, folk, rock, and electronic collective Fat-Suit, Mercury Prize nominated British folk star Sam Leeand Glasgow’s own indie-folk stars Admiral Fallow.
Sitting at the heart of the festival site will be the spectacular ‘Pavilion of Perpetual Light’, a striking 10-metre-tall art installation and main stage. The Pavilion is created from 60 1m x 1m accelerated growing cubes specially created for the Dandelion programme, brought together to form a giant structure with built-in stage, acting as a ‘living’ backdrop to performances. The two other stages on site include the circular ‘Orchard Stage’ presenting artists in the round, allowing people to gather 360 degrees around the stage to experience performances in a close-up, intimate setting and the ‘Dandelion Stage’ which also has a view of the Pavilion.
Alongside the music line-up sits a creative programme of activities for all ages. Over three days, scientists, activists, technologists and writers will come together with chefs, musicians, artists and performers to spark conversations around Dandelion’s core theme of how people can creatively engage with topics such as food poverty, climate action and sustainability.
In the Dandelion ‘Hothouse’, audiences can feed hungry minds with inspiring talks from some of the UK’s leading thinkers in food systems and environmentalism. ‘Incredible Edible’ founder Pam Warhust will chat community, kinship and growing with seasoned food activist and founding member of Propagate, Abi Mordin. Forager Monica Wilde, who ate only foraged foods for a year and Lynn Cassells, co-owner of award-winning food project Lynbreck Croft tell tales of their own quiet revolutions against current food structures. While Dandelion Music Director Donald Shaw, musician Karine Polwart, composer Ceylan Hay and writer JC Niala share how they are engaging directly with nature, and with the climate emergency, through their powerful projects, in the choices they make as artists, and in their commissions and collaborations.
A series of Dandelion ‘Potting Sheds’ dotted across the park will host artists, performers and community organisations. Visitors are invited to pop inside and build their own planters using pre-cut scrap wood with Free Wheel North; participate in music and movement performances, write poetry or create their own seed bombs and avocado starter seed kits with ETSD and much more.
Walkabout theatre will fascinate and enlighten throughout the park at every turn, including an immersive installation of an 18-metre-long immersive whale installation, made entirely of recycled ocean plastics, exploring marine conservation. Under 5s can discover the sensory world of plants and nature in The Nursery.
On Sunday afternoon there will be a Dandelion ‘Free For All’, a mass free plant giveaway to inspire the public to grow at home, while a 5m-tall singing art installation made of flowers and plants called the Dandelion Singer serenades the growers with harvest songs.
The festival culminates with a special long-table Meal of Thanks, prepared by professional chefs, celebrating unsung heroes of the past two years, nominated by members of their community. Nominations are open until Friday 10 June.
Music Director for Dandelion, Donald Shaw said: “Just as plants can grow from tiny seeds, great music can grow from small ideas that we nourish till they bloom into full art forms. After the pandemic, it seemed even more pronounced to consider the medicinal value of music and its positive impact on mental health, social cohesion and community spirit – similar to the visceral experience of feeling the earth in your hands and the joy you get from watching something grow, so music plays a very important part in this creative programme.’
“All of the musicians who feature on our Dandelion Festivals line-up have a passion for the values of Dandelion, sharing our beliefs in environmentalism and individual action against climate change. We very much anticipate bringing people together around the special ‘Pavilion of Perpetual Light’ installation, surrounded in the iconic splendour of Kelvingrove Park.”
Throughout the weekend, audiences and the public are encouraged to enjoy a brilliant selection of street food from local traders, Screaming Peacock, Mangiamo Pizza, Down the Hatch, Yu-Ca-Taco, Woodland’s own Mrs Falafal, Stand Bahn Mi, Hector and Harriet and Fotheringham’s ice-cream van.
The Dandelion Festival is free to attend and non-ticketed. For further information on the festival or the full Dandelion programme visit dandelion.scot.