Farmfest Diaries #2

In the second of our Farmfestival Diaries for this year's festival we caught up with Hazel from the children's tent…

Being covered in glitter with a cheesy children’s song stuck in my head is just another day at the office for me. My name is Hazel, I run the children’s tent at Farmfestival. When not in a tent full of kids, I am a freelance teacher and facilitate workshops in various London museums such as the V&A and The Geffrye Museum.

Planning Farmfestival is a task which is ongoing for me; I’m constantly filling my flat with collections of shiny paper or bottle lids – as there is something to be made from all of that! I’m also on first name terms with the man who runs the fabric shop – which I’m sure not many people who live in a big city can boast. In the past I’ve bought tonnes of fabric for bunting and lengths of red felt, which was use to make last year’s mushroom cushions amongst other things. I also love a trip to Yeovil Scrapstore, which is an Aladdin’s Cave of cheap and sustainable art supplies which have been discarded and donated from factories. It’s a great place to let your imagination run wild with the possibilities of what could be created over the festival weekend. It’s great to give children the space to make mess and work creatively on a large scale – a freedom an outdoor festival such as Farmfestival can really accommodate. My favourite thing we’ve made at Farmfestival has to be the giant papier mache pirate ship, complete with a secret tunnel, sharks in the water and a plank for any naughty parents to walk!
 

My highlight of the festival has to be the hat competition, just one of the many activities programmed for families, it seems that the bar of creativity and epic hats just keeps rising I can still picture the shoal of fish entry we had a few years back – complete with engineered tin foil fish hats!

I also recruit volunteers each year, Farmfestival is a non-corporate festival so we don’t have a huge budget at our disposal. This means we have to be more artistic with our resources! That said, volunteers play a key role in the running of the festival. Last year I had a fantastic team who even joined in the fun by dressing up as fairytale characters for the enchanted forest theme, starting a monster owl conga at the Big Bad Wolf’s Disco, another highlight.