When: 21st-31st May
Where: Hay-on-Wye, Wales
Tickets: £28-88 (+ bf)
If you like your music served with a side of intellectualism, then the music and philosophy festival, How The Light Gets In, is just your bag. 650 events, 370 acts, 200 speakers, 11 days and 9 stages. This is a festival that spoils you for choice, whether you want to kick back to some live music, be titillated by some comedy or thrown into an existential conundrum before being shown the light – HTLGI has it all.
The festival takes place in the quaint Welsh town of Hay-On-Wye, known for its second-hand bookshops and picturesque scenes. With a Banquet Kitchen, Globe Kitchen, Distillery pop-ups and Champagne Bars, needless to say food and drink is of a high standard. However, there is still plenty for those not wanting to splash out.
With regards to the lineup, you’ll be hard pushed to find a festival with as diverse and intriguing a line-up as HTLGI. There are talks on philosophy, science, ethics, politics, art, media, culture, film and more! To name a few, The Independent columnist and author of Exotic England, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, will be debating the advantage and exclusion of borders with Labour MP Frank Field and LSE political theorist Chandran Kukathas. Greenpeace director John Sauven, London Feminist Network founder Finn Mackay and author of The Lives of Others Neel Mukherjee will discuss the differentiation between both peaceful and violent revolutions in ‘Gandhi vs Guevara‘. There will be a screening of Grayson Perry’s documentary, All in the Best Possible Taste. The music stages will host, to name but a few, Jamie Woon, Afriquoi, Henri Herbert, along with many late-night parties.
It’s going to a special week, but you can choose to come down for however many days that suits you best, check out the full programme here and try to not get too excited.