Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Park to host free music and food festival as part of UK-wide culture celebration

Glasgow's Kelvingrove Park is to be transformed for a free harvest-themed festival staged as part of a multi-million pound project bringing food-growing and culture together.

The organisers of Celtic Connections will be helping to stage the three-day event in June, which will have a 10-metre tall vertical farm installation as a centrepiece feature.

As well as live music, the line-up will feature talks and workshops with scientists, activists, technologists, chefs, writers and artists.

Street theatre acts and entertainers will also appear throughout the festival, which will boast three stages.

A 10-metre tall vertical farm will be provide a backdrop for the free Dandelion festivals in Glasgow and Inverness this year.

Niteworks, Rura, Newton Faulkner, This is the Kit, Admiral Fallow and Hannah Rarity have all been confirmed for the first of two major free festivals being staged as part of the Dandelion project, which has a budget of more than £7 million and is being backed by the Scottish and UK governments.

A second free Dandelion Festival will be staged at the Northern Meeting Park in Inverness in September at the culmination of a programme of food-growing initiatives and cultural projects being rolled out across Scotland over the next five months.

Both festivals will feature “Pavilions of Perpetual Light” featuring dozens of miniature vertical farms. Along with specially created “edible farms,” the cubes are expected to help turn unused and derelict locations across the country into new food-growing gardens.

Glasgow’s Dandelion Festival will also feature the live debut of Hen Hoose, a new collective of female and non-binary singers and songwriters, including Tamara Schlesinger, Emma Pollock, Elisabeth Elektra, Suse Bear, Pippa Murphy, Karine Polwart, Carla J Easton, Jayda and Amandah Wilkinson.

Celtic Connections creative producer Donald Shaw is music director of the Dandelion festival. Picture: Andrew Cawley

Other acts include Les Amazones d’Afrique, The Orchestral Qawwali Project, Abi Sampa, Darlingside, Lyre Lyre and the National Youth Pipe Band.

Celtic Connections creative producer Donald Shaw, who is also music director of the free festivals, said: “Glasgow’s Dandelion festival will be a very special environment with performances on unique stages within the iconic splendour of Kelvingrove Park.

"All of the musicians who feature on our line-up have a passion for the values of Dandelion, sharing our beliefs in environmentalism, individual action against climate change and the need to address issues around food poverty.

"The festivals will tell the Dandelion story in creative, accessible, powerful ways and make connections between growing and cultural experiences.”

Signy Jakobsdottir, Emma Pollock and Jayda are members of the Hen Hoose collective who will be playing at the Dandelion festival in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow in June. Picture: Andrew Cawley

Hen Hoose founder Tamara Schlesinger said: “Hen Hoose was formed to highlight the talent of female and non-binary songwriters and producers in Scotland.

“I can’t think of a better environment for us to have our first show. It is fantastic to have the opportunity to bring all of us together on one stage, to play at an event with such important values.”

Dr Bridget McConnell, chief executive of Glasgow Life, which is helping to stage the festival in the park, said: “Set against the spectacular backdrop

of Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow’s exciting Dandelion Festival will bring a rich mix of world-class music and inspiring and immersive cultural experiences to the city this summer.

"The Dandelion programme is an innovative and ambitious approach to community growing and engagement, one that’s rooted in bringing people together to celebrate food, music, sustainability and diversity as well as showcasing the power of collaboration and collective action.

“Projects like Dandelion are hugely important to Scotland’s social and economic recovery, and the recovery of our creative industries.”

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