The debut of the KITE festival will be taking place in June next year, after having been delayed twice due to the pandemic. The event will be a three-day camping festival from June 10th-12th and will be taking place at Kirtlington Park in Oxfordshire. As part of the first wave of artists announced for the project, famous names such as Grace Jones, Jarvis Cocker and Tom Misch will be appearing.
We are so excited to announce the first wave of artists and speakers for KITE 2022. Join us next June at Kirtlington Park, Oxfordshire. Early bird tickets go on sale Friday at 9am. https://t.co/mcXS8I61SC pic.twitter.com/oeYSFvmEoz
— KITE Festival (@KiteFSTVL) November 16, 2021
The event started in January 2020 as a Kickstarter project, but after enthusiastic support, it’s grown to have the reach it does today. Combining an innovative format of “ideas and music”, the festival plans to bring together famous artists and thinkers, mixing workshops, long-form interviews, panels, debates and the more traditional music performances that festival-goers will be expecting. The festival aims that “No stone will go unturned”, asking “provocative, fundamental questions in a highly polarised world”. KITE’s website describes the topics being explored as ranging from “the environment, society, technology, sport and political systems to identity, wealth, the arts, history, globalisation, and sexuality”, as they try to get to grips with “What binds us together? What drives us apart?”
As part of the ‘ideas’ line-up, it seems Jarvis Cocker will be putting the guitar down for once, being set to talk about culture. With him come the likes of David Miliband (our former foreign secretary and brother of ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband) who’ll be talking about crisis leadership. Culinary expert Delia Smith will be covering culture, and journalist Tina Brown will be getting to grips with the royal family. Of course, with all of this seriousness, the audience will be wanting a bit of light relief, with famous comedians such as Reginald D Hunter and David O’Doherty joining as well. The festival’s website describes the choice in line-up as being not based on genre, but “an ability to move the audience’s head, heart and hips”. For a fuller list of the line-up so far, you can look at the festival’s website here.
In speaking about the event, festival director Ciro Romano had this to say: “Ideas and music have always co-existed; they are linked in our history, but, for the most part, there has been a clear dividing line between ideas/literary festivals and music festival. So, we are thrilled to have developed a new greenfield festival that puts music and ideas on an equal footing”.
Tickets for the event can be bought on the festival’s website here and will be available this Friday from 9 am. Hopefully, current affairs will be kinder to the festival this time around. It’s been a long time coming, but with this much promise, it should hopefully be worth it.
