The Unthanks, Gruff Rhys and Field Music in line for Timber Festival

Music, performance and arts will run wild once more as Timber Festival announces its line-up for 2021.

Like many large-scale, crowd-pulling events, this year’s festivities had to be cancelled amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

But Timber Festival will bounce back in 2021 with a line-up of entertainment that includes Super Furry Animals’ frontman Gruff Rhys, folk duo The Unthanks, imaginative band Field Music and folk singer Sam Lee.

The award-winning festival will run from July 2-4 at Fearnedock in the heart of the National Forest on the Leicestershire/Derbyshire border.

Timber encourages audiences to re-examine their relationship with the natural world. Attendees are invited to join artists, musicians, performers and writers, as they respond and react to the forest in bold and exhilarating ways.

Like-minded community

The Unthanks said: “We are really longing to play live music again, so it brings us great joy to announce our Timber Festival slot! To be able to perform in the glorious forest and to connect and unite with other like-minded individuals will be really special!”

Sam Lee said: “It’s a real treat that Timber is back up and running and happy in 2021. I can’t wait to be part of that amazing family community of art makers and builders of music and human communities in the National Forest."

Elizabeth Alker, host of BBC Rdio 3’s Unclassified and a new patron of the festival, will take over a day on the woodland Eyrie stage, programming a mixture of live music, spoken word and a DJ set.

After-dark attractions

After dark, Timber comes alive. The natural amphitheatre beneath the trees is replete with beats, lasers and lights. As well as his appearance in Wilderness Tracks, the nation’s Poet Laureate Simon Armitage switches a mic for the turntables as he takes to the woodland Eyrie Stage as a night-time DJ.

BBC Radio 4 presenter Geoff Bird will host a live version Wilderness Tracks with the nation’s bard Simon Armitage and beloved Coronation Street star Julie Hesmondhalgh (who played Hayley Cropper in the soap).

Timber will also host a reading of Letters to the Earth from Culture Declares Emergency, a book compiled of moving and inspiring letters about the climate crisis from the British public, along with contributions from Emma Thompson, Yoko Ono and Kate Tempest.

To find out more about the programme, go to www.timberfestival.org.uk website.

(photo: The Unthanks)

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