Festival at the Edge 2026: A Personal Review

I am a creature of habit: I always drive the same route back from the supermarket (a different one to the route there, obviously); I always have the same supper on a Friday (fish and chips, obviously) and, if I am working from home, everything stops at 1215h weekdays so that I can watch Bargain Hunt (obviously). Change is not something, therefore, to which I generally respond positively, and the news that Festival at the Edge was relocating some 20 miles from Hopton Wafers in Shropshire (where it had been settled since 2019) and crossing a county border to Bromyard in Herefordshire, was not particularly welcome news.

However, the site was relatively easy to find, and the sight of tents and the festival flags as we drove out of the town and down the hill provided reassurance that not only were we in the right place, but that there was also going to be some familiarity about it. One glitch on arrival was the lack of signage (specifically for drivers) and stewards who were not prepared for the arrival of different categories of visitors (on the Friday, we were asked at the gate, ‘Are you camping?’; our negative response seemed to completely throw the steward who didn’t seem to know what to do with us).

The site is owned and managed by the Bromyard Folk Festival and was certainly more compact than the festival’s previous home in Shropshire. The smaller nature of the site may have contributed to some issues of sound spilling from amplified telling and music from the large venues, acoustic music from the Bar Tent, the clashing of sticks and jangling bells from the Morris side, the coffee grinder and steamer from the Coffee Trike (sited adjacent to the largest venue), and the strike of wood on board for the clog dancing performances. Hopefully, if FaTE returns to Bromyard, the site plan will take the refusal of sound waves to be halted by canvas walls more into consideration.

The festival started with a procession to the centre of the site, followed by a simple opening ceremony with music and dance. The sequence was bright, inviting and effective as a way of gathering the assembled tellers and hearers of story, and it was inclusive – at least up to the point at which the leader used the word ‘we’ to invoke the ‘spirits of this place’, co-opting me into a spirituality that I neither own nor wish to be conscripted into.

The Opening Ceremony - FaTE 2026

The proximity of the venues, traders and caterers certainly made the event feel smaller than last year, but I couldn’t decide whether the attendance had remained stable or not. The number of contributing artists was comparable between the two years, and there was certainly enough on the programme to give any festival attender a choice of events between the opening on Friday afternoon to the final stacking of chairs on the afternoon of Sunday. Over the weekend, I was able to catch stories from James Canvin, Maria Gillan, Xanthe Gresham-Knight, Dominic Kelly, Phil Okwady, Baden Prince and Taffy Thomas (with Paul Davies and Richard and Liz York). I am sorry that there were tellers whom I didn’t hear, and second performances by those listed that I missed: the hot weather (and the concomitant lack of sleep) meant that I was at times struggling to maintain the attention that the performers deserved (and at one point just gave in and slept in the car for an hour in the middle of the day). There isn’t the space in this blog entry to cover all the performances for which I was present, so I have chosen a few to discuss below.

Before giving consideration to some of the storytelling performances, however, I think I need to highlight the perceived shift in FaTE’s nature as a storytelling festival, a shift effected by introducing shared venues for storytellers and musical acts (and a shift that has been controversial in some storytelling quarters and that I have questioned in the review of a previous FaTE). Bearing all that in mind, I was rather caught out this year by finding myself enjoying the musical content as much as the storytelling content of the festival.

John Tams in Concert

On the Friday night, John Tams (folksinger and songwriter (and actor)) gave a performance of a mixture of his own compositions and traditional songs. As a younger adult, I looked forward to each new episode of the TV adaptations of the Napoleonic adventures of Bernard Cornwall’s soldier Sharpe and would spend the days afterwards with Jon Tams’ theme song Over the Hills and Far Away as a not completely unwelcome earworm. It was a real pleasure, then, to have the opportunity to hear both more of John Tams repertoire and learn something of the background to his life as a performer and composer.

Leominster Morris

The pitching of the festival on the grounds of Bromyard Folk Festival meant that there were often music sessions in the Bar Tent, with fiddles, concertinas, melodeons, pipes and (at one point) a dulcimer. I grew up in the English folk tradition and, while the background music did sometimes present a challenge to conversation for me as someone who wears hearing aids, it was a joyful soundtrack to the festival. I make no secret of my Morris dancing past, and I only have to detect a whiff of sticks, hankies and bells to be transported. I had not seen Leominster Morris before, but I certainly hope to witness them dance on other occasions. I still get to see quite a lot of Morris, and Leominster’s performances were characterised by fantastic musicality, precision in movement and an infectious energy. Oh, and I was also very jealous of their beautiful and varied jackets too.

So, onto the storytelling…

James Canvin telling Threads of Fate 

I need to declare an interest here as James is a fellow-teller at Surrey Storytellers and I have heard him tell some of the Norse tales that he brought together for this set in the club environment.

James took on an ambitious task, leading us from the darkness and chaos of Ginnungagap to the

echoes of Ragnarök as the all too human fallibility of the gods was revealed in their relationships, decisions and actions. Apart from the skill at shaping such an epic tale, I will confess to admiring. above all. James’s ability to hold onto the names of gods, giants, places and times that completely defeat me as a storyteller.

I would go further and say that these myths not only defeat me as a teller, but they can also defeat me as a story-listener. So, as someone who can struggle holding a large amount of information in my working memory, I appreciated James’s use of a simple and consistent formula of words and actions (while walking diagonally across stage) to mark the break between sections of the story.

Baden Prince Jnr telling What a Woman!

Baden and I have crossed storytelling paths regularly since we both appeared at the Hastings Storytelling Festival in 2019, and recently both performed at the East Anglian Storytelling Festival. However, FaTE 2026 was the first event at which I have seen a complete show from Baden. Baden has been established as a spoken word performer for many years (I hope that he won’t mind me saying that), but What a Woman! was the performance that has cemented him in my mind as a storyteller specifically.

In What a Woman! (a show developed with the ‘invaluable assistance’ of Maria Credali), Baden shared stories of the grandmother who raised him in Antigua when his parents travelled to the UK as part of the Windrush Generation. These tales of a remarkable woman amused, inspired and moved in-turn, and I feel that Baden’s ability to create an almost immediate connection with his audience meant that he could choose any emotional direction, and we would travel with him, trusting that we were safe in his hands and that he would leave us on comforting shores.   

Xanthe Gresham-Knight telling Stories from Iran and Ancient Persia

Xanthe’s collection of tales from Iran and Ancient Persia drew on Ferdowsi’s epic poem Shahnameh (Book of Kings) and included passages which were recited. This poetic (or Bardic) form of storytelling can leave me cold as, though I may love the language and admire the storytellers virtuosity in recitation, I often feel that a fourth wall has been erected between teller and audience. In this way, the storytelling itself is foregrounded, and the audience is a witness to the performance rather than the story.

I am still trying to work-out how she did it but, while Xanthe certainly did declaim the poetry, she still managed to maintain contact with the audience. It is certainly the case that Xanthe’s performance can turn on a sixpence vocally, physically and emotionally, and she is incredibly adept at differentiating and shifting between the roles of narrator, character, explainer (or observer of events) and conversationalist. This meant that the audience was clear when it was being asked to contribute thoughts and ideas to the narrative and when it was more appropriate simply to listen and provide feedback through non-verbal means (facial expression, intakes of breath, etc). And, I need to be clear that Xanthe was as attentive to these non-verbal cues as she was to the more conversational elements of the performance.

And finally…

Despite some practical teething issues at this year’s Festival at the Edge, it was a good year. There was a range of performances and performance styles (from theatrical to intimate, from poetic to conversational), and I wish that I had been able to attend more of the storytelling sessions.

I love the programming of workshops and talks at FaTE and have in the past thoroughly enjoyed the opportunities to learn at the festival as well as enjoy performances. Sadly, this year, I only managed one such session and (sadder still) it was a disappointing experience, leaving me wondering on what basis people are invited to lead workshops or give talks.

The Ace of Clubs with Francesca Mackenzie, Lu Orza, Robin Eastoe, Tim Ditchburn and Merl Fluin

I do, however, want to end on a positive note. On the Saturday morning, for the second year in a row, FaTE hosted tellers from storytelling groups around the country. The Ace of Clubs session is specifically for tellers who (at least for the present) are not professional, and so this slot in the programme provides a stage for beginning tellers to perform to a wider audience than their local club and, at the same time, celebrating the invaluable work that clubs across the UK are supporting the art of storytelling. Bravo FaTE, and I hope that this is now a permanent feature of the festival.