Strawberry Fair is always fun and the 50th anniversary of the event on Midsummer Common this weekend was a showcase for music, arts, crafts and retail, with visitors - estimated at upwards of 30,000 - having fun at one of the largest free festivals in Europe.
The event is volunteer-run which and as such a great example of how a community can work together and celebrate together. There’s so much music it sometimes swirls wildly around the Common from multiple performance areas - and this year there’s a new stage to add to the line-up.
The half-century anniversary had the more traditional Scarecrow Corner stage, plus stages for The Flying Pig, Plastic Den, Revolting Youth, Cambuskers, Rebel Love, The Portland, Cambridge 105 Radio and Shady Nasty. New to the 2024 running order is the CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) stage, which offers life-saving services to prevent suicide by provoking national conversation, and “bringing people together to reject living miserably”.
The CALM musical project emerged from the Haymakers, with a successful benefit raising £500 for Strawberry Fair in April. The aim of the stage is “to present music and performance from Cambridge’s diverse community currently under-represented at the Fair, showcasing the changing nature of the festival over the 50 years that Strawberry Fair has been running”.
The sets began in the afternoon, starting with jazz and then Latino.
The extraordinary local duo The Hunters followed with their awesome soundscapes. Fortunately the CALM performers play in a tent, and the sound system was incredible: Neil Hunter’s bass playing on his acoustic guitar sounded sweepingly orchestral and set a new template for sound at the Fair, which can become murky with the various stages all competing for your eardrums. Not that there’s anything wrong with hardcore metal, especially the group that had a saxophone player in the band - true originality, Strawberry Fair-style, at its best.
The Malvo Voices of Ukraine followed The Hunters on the CALM stage with an uplifting performance from a choir whose repertoire oscillates between tender and joyous. The choir was followed by Ukrainian singer Tetiana Kysliak, who really got the crowd involved, and then the supremely talented Cambridge Takht, whose Middle Eastern sounds feature classical Arabic instruments including the oud and the qanun as well as percussion, choir and violin.
The CALM programme concluded with Daria Mirea from Romania and Miguel Zambujeira from Portugal.
Strawberry Fair is very family-oriented and nowhere is this more apparent than the Kids Park, which had a big top for musical performers and an arena for clowns, dance and stories. One of the stalls was for Wild Wings Forest School, which is based in Harston. Forest schools originated in Scandinavia: it’s an outdoors-based method of encouraging children to play and learn from the natural environment.
“It has elements of bushcraft, such as learning to make fire, how to use tools, and go foraging,” says Dorka, who runs Wild Wings. “The most important thing is kids are given loads of freedom: they can choose what they want to do.”
It’s Dorka’s first Fair as a volunteer and she had a very productive day.
“It was great,” she said of the occasion. “There was loads of different stuff going on - arts, crafts, gardening, making bracelets, shows and entertainment, karaoke, the entertainment stage had circus acts and fire tricks…. The Greenpeace kids entertainment, where they dress up as superheroes, was very popular too.”
It was also hard work - and very rewarding.
“I love Strawberry Fair,” Says Dorka. “I look forward to it. It's such an amazing event and it’s all volunteer-run. You get nothing, you have to do it all yourself, and it makes you feel good that they are so many people willing to do their own thing for the community, and it showcases other organisations such as the smartphone-free stall, and climate action for parents.
“It’s a great way of keeping the community spirit alive, and it’s such a wonderful day out.
“It’s easy to think Cambridge is just about the university and this white-collared weird elite thing, but there’s definitely an underground scene that emerges on the first week of June - it would be nice to see more of them.
“The team I worked with, I cannot speak highly enough of them, they’re really lovely people, the stewards came up for chats, people introduced themselves… every single person was just so nice. It was lovely that there's so many lovely humans about and all I could think was: ‘Where do you live normally?’”
Here’s to the next 50 years!
