Day 15: Feva Pitch

“Tucked away in our subconscious is an idyllic vision. We see ourselves on a long trip that spans the continent. We are travelling by train… But uppermost in our minds is the final destination. On a certain day at a certain hour we will pull into the station. Bands will be playing and flags waving…”

Robert Hastings writes: “Sooner or later we must realize there is no station, no one place to arrive at once and for all. The true joy of life is the trip. The station is only a dream. It constantly outdistances us.”

Knaresborough station was just one of the many stations place-marking every step of my voyage around Yorkshire this month. On Wednesday lunchtime I arrived, not to flags waving and bands playing, but to find out more about the fever that has gripped the town in the midst of its annual Festival of Entertainment and Visual Arts (FEVA).

Ten days of music performances, author talks, workshops, and sheer fun and games certainly make it an impressive line-up on paper at least. Now in its eleventh year, the festival brings together the entire community to enjoy an incredible array of talent.

This year’s programme alone has to make it the only place where you’ll find Dylan Thomas, Joanne Harris, Van Gogh, the Guardian’s Martin Wainwright, and Britain’s top Madness tribute band competing for the limelight with African drumming workshops, bell-ringing demonstrations, and smooth jazz afternoons in the pub.

Remarkably, this huge organisational effort is the work of a small but dedicated committee of volunteers. One of them, Michelle, met me at the station and took me all over town throughout the afternoon. Teaching in Holbeck when she’s not bringing great drama to Knaresborough, her schoolroom enthusiasm is infectious, and there could have been surely no one more passionate or more excited with whom to savour the festival.

Simply walking through the streets of Knaresborough this week, before you even arrive at any of the festival venues, you see a town in high spirits. Along the High Street and in the market square, shop windows are decked out in the pink colours of the festival, whilst glorious mural paintings created by the local community are on show on every other wall you pass by.

First off, Michelle took me to the charming Cross Keys pub where Simon Parkinson was accompanying a beautiful singer on a selection of jazz standards before an audience tapping their feet to the beat.

Indeed, sweet sounds have been spilling onto the streets all week around town, including at Flaithulach on the High Street, a shop specialising in Irish and Celtic traditional music. Later in the evening we went and listened to Heather who runs the shop, playing Gaelic strains with her guests as passers-by dropped in and even stayed for a jig.

But as we enjoyed a bit of Nina Simone back at Cross Keys, Michelle took me through the programme, sharing some of the week’s highlights. Earlier in the week, a husband-and-wife company Lighthouse Theatre had brought an interpretation of Dylan Thomas and two performances of Noel Coward’s Mild Oats, both drawing such crowds that some had to be turned away.

They’ll be back in town later in the year however, adapting Christmas tales from Thomas and even Richard Burton, arriving in Knaresborough on December 19^th. After wowing audiences this week, Adrian and Sonia from Lighthouse Theatre – whom Michelle and I chanced upon on our journey round town – are looking forward to their return, and are already selling tickets for their next Knaresborough show. I certainly hope I’ll be in the county then to go back and see them.

It’s a testament to the great efforts of the committee and to the support of the local folk that the festival can not only offer so much at such low costs (many of the events in the programme are free, and nothing is more than a few pounds) but also attract so many big names.

Joanne Harris brought the crowds to the town library as she came to speak about her latest novel Blueeyedboy, a complex story of the murderous fantasies of a middle-aged man about which he writes and shares with his little online world. Who’d have thought that you could step off Knaresborough High Street before bumping into a world-renowned author and shaking her hand?

Indeed, when I tweeted that for my final stop of the evening I was headed to a Bollywood night at an Indian restaurant, some were just as startled: Bollywood in Knaresborough?!

Every evening, local restaurants have been getting in on the act, with dinner and entertainment at venues across town. I had struck gold on Wednesday, as that evening The Spice Merchant were hosting a full house, entertaining us with live music and Bollywood-style dance, not to mention a sublime feast on our tables.

I was invited to eat with John Minary, the head honcho of the organising committee, and his family: wife Annette and daughter Francesca. Indeed on Wednesday evening, Francesca was nervously awaiting her AS Level results coming out the following morning. With John and Annette right behind her, I think she’ll do just fine.

John is a former copper who used to patrol my neck of the woods, around the east of Leeds, once upon a time living in digs barely half a mile up the road from where I live now. Now in Knaresborough, he pours his heart and soul into the festival, and the result is incredible: getting everyone involved and excited about what’s going on, simply raising a smile to as many faces as possible.

After visiting Settle and Hebden Bridge and other spots throughout the month where enthusiastic, passionate people are trying to raise the cultural profile in their small corner of the globe, I had been thinking about “culture” and “the arts”, and these terms and ideas which carry certain connotations, such that the idea of visiting a gallery or going to the theatre is a distant notion to so many people – something which is simply not for them.

In Knaresborough, John and his team have brought all of this to the doorstep, to the public house, to the shops, to the high street. They have reclaimed music and art and the spoken word and brought it all into the daily life of the community, crossing that psychological divide and bringing beauty of every form into everyday existence. As Michelle took me for a late lunch at So! Bar on the High Street, I looked out the window and saw a young mother showing her child one of the paintings on the walls across the road.

And I thought about all the people living in other towns and cities, whose only exposure to art or drama might be an enforced theatre visit in secondary school by reluctant, exasperated teachers, whose visit to the shops every morning or to the pub every evening provides none of the beauty, none of the sheer wonder and charm that the world can offer – as it does in Knaresborough this week.

I wondered too why it is that art and culture are alienating ideas to so many, and thought that perhaps it’s because most of us are ultimately conservative creatures, sometimes afraid to tread and blaze a trail, afraid of the destination that a different and radical path may lead us to. Really, the beauty of art and entertainment is not about taking us to that station at the end of our journey, but about enjoying the journey itself.

I had met John briefly earlier in the day as he spoke at the Frazer Theatre about his expedition to Borneo, joining the international development charity Raleigh to work on a range of inspiring projects. He had taken photographs and presented slides, videos and music, sharing with the audience the incredible, challenging, and transformative experience.

One evening on the project, in the thick of night with no light by which to read, the crew were sharing their thoughts and feelings about what being out there meant to them. One of them recited those words of Robert Hastings about the station, and the journey. Telling me about it over dinner, it brought John – a stalwart figure built like a man who should be playing prop in the Challenge Cup final next week – to tears. And me too, simply hearing of it.

“So,” the piece concludes, “stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles. Instead, climb more mountains, eat more ice cream, go bare foot more often, swim more rivers, watch more sunsets, laugh more, cry less. Life must be lived as we go along. The station will come soon enough.”

This week in Knaresborough, FEVA is about exactly that spirit: enjoying the fullness and the richness of life, and of each other. It was an honour to spend the day in its midst.

For further background as to Mark’s challenge check out ‘28 days later’