Britains Greenest Festival
Croissant Neuf, two time winners of “Britain's Greenest Festival Award”, have just held the 5th annual “Summer Party”. The festival, a long time ambition of the team behind Croissant Neuf's Glastonbury Greenfield venue, has taken the warmth, energy and great performances of Pilton and put them into a spectacular natural amphitheatre on a Welsh hillside.
From small beginnings, in the first year only 190 brave punters endured a weekend of horizontal rain, this year's festival has come of age. A near capacity crowd had a feast of music in almost perfect weather. Main stage highpoints came from Steve Knightly, Luke Concannon, 
Ed Sheeran and The Beat along with Jimmy Davis, Philip Henry and Hanna Martin, Texan “stunt guitarist” Rodney Brannigan and “Tin Roots”.
This year, for the first time, with the help of sponsorship from Greenfone, the UK's only zero carbon phone company, the festival upgraded the second stage from a cafe venue to the stand alone “Croissant Neuf 2”. Sandwiched between “Baby Sam's Bar” and “The Organic Chi” shop the venue brought a new area to the festival. Featuring some of the best of Britain's up and coming and unsigned bands, including Stealing Sheep, One Sixth of Tommy, Mad Dog Mcrea, Laid Blak, and Cats in the Basement, CN2 was a winner with the public and seems set for a great future.
CNSP is about far more than music – it's an antidote to big faceless commercial festivals. Human scale, safe, child friendly it gets back to the original festival vibe, where people have the time and space to get to know each other, share ideas, make new friends – and everyone seems to have a smile on their face. Amazingly, the stages, venues, stalls and the site infrastructure are all solar powered. The design of the systems and lighting allows the entire 3000 person event to run on just 14 kw of electricity. Last year's event was carbon negative. The on-site carbon offsetting scheme, planted enough tree to absorb 20 tons more carbon than it created. This years event expects to repeat the carbon figures and recycle a minimum of 90% of its waste.
The contrast between CNSP and the major festivals is stark. Leaving Glastonbury or any of the other big events is like driving through a mixture of war zone and a waste tip – the site here is as clean on Monday morning as it was on Thursday afternoon. The result – a festival that had queues on the way out because everyone leaving wanted to stop and say thank you – and “see you next year”!
Quick selection of images from the festival more images and captions to come!
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. offer a consultancy service to anyone wanting to set up a small event – services include, licensing advice, event and health and safety planning, event management and venue, PA and solar unit hire.
Greenfone aim to be Britain's first zero carbon phone network, operating from a zero carbon data centre, meeting power needs from renewable sources and directly offsetting any surplus carbon by tree planting.
