The Homemade festival

Celebrations of harvest have been a mainstay of community life right through human history. They are occasions for communities to gather and celebrate their life, give thanks for the abundance of creation, and imagine the future. In our own day, we have recently seen an enormous upsurge in interest in growing produce. Is this the time to re-imagine Harvest? Here are plans for a Homemade Festival that you might like to try.

The idea is very simple. You put the word out to people and groups in your area that a Homemade Festival is to be held on a certain date and place. We suggest late August or early Sept. (traditional harvest dates of early October are too late, garden and allotment produce is largely over). You might hold a meeting of key people to make sure they all understand the ethos of the event.

Different groups within the local community are invited to have a presence at the festival.  The theme is ‘homemade’, which means that the people of the community are encouraged to grow their own produce, make things and develop music and arts for the festival. They organise their own contributions according to their culture within the aims of the event. Some will provide homemade food traditional to their people and culture. Some will knit, sculpt or make things from wood. Others may play music or show artwork, like as in an arts trail. Some will want to sell their wares for the benefit of the group they represent. This is good, so long as they are home-grown or home-made, but try to make any selling low key and cultivate an atmosphere of celebration and generosity.

Examples of activities that can be represented:

• growing food
• cooking and preserving food
• making clothes and household items
• making music, storytelling and theatre
• exploring the arts and contemplation
• celebrating particular cultures

This would be a great opportunity to showcase the work of a Grow Zones group in your area.

We suggest that churches, who put on a Homemade festival might consciously do so as an equal partner with other groups, so that the event feels a whole community celebration. One way of achieving this is to ask someone outside the church to facilitate the initial meeting.

The Homemade festival day forms one ingredient of an eight day festival entitled Re-imagining Harvest which is being made available in June this year through the online resources of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. We will feature other aspects of Re-imagining Harvest on this site shortly.

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