The event at Lost Horizon will bring together some of the most instrumental people from the early 1990s free party scene
By Mark Taylor Life Writer
Festivalgoers these days are used to paying hundreds of pounds for the privilege of spending a few days under canvas in a muddy field. But a new exhibition in Bristol celebrates the 30th anniversary of the free party movement born with the secret raves of the 1990s.
Free Party: A Retrospective will celebrate the birth of the UK’s iconic free party movement, with a week of events, art, music and more hosted at the Lost Horizon venue in St Jude’s. The event will bring together some of the most instrumental people from the early 1990s free party scene and mark the 30-year anniversary of the legendary Castlemorton free festival, the UK’s biggest ever illegal rave which took place in Worcestershire in May 1992.
Inspired by and working alongside the creators of ‘Free Party: A Folk History’, a major independent documentary currently in post-production, Free Party: A Retrospective, is a mixture of free activity and ticketed club night events from the people who lived and breathed this movement. Organisers say it will celebrate part of cultural history and be a place to revisit memories as well as understand the journey that built today’s free party and festival scene from the perspective of those involved in it from the start.
The week-long programme of events will include free talks, panel discussions with Q&As, and an exhibition of photography, audio, artwork and film. Partygoers will also be able to buy tickets to an array of club nights from legendary sound systems of the time such as SP23 (Spiral Tribe), Bedlam and DiY, alongside Bristol collectives such as Duvet Vous.
Profits from the tickets and donations will go to related causes. These include Refugee Community Kitchen, Spirit Wrestlers, Drive2survive and Friends Families and Travellers.
Speaking about the programme of events, director of Free Party: A Folk History and curator of the exhibition, Aaron Trinder, said: “When independently embarking on the idea to make a feature documentary about the Free Party movement I had no idea of the breadth and depth of the stories I would find when interviewing people from the scene, including Circus Warp, DiY, Spiral Tribe, Free Party People, Bedlam and many others within the travelling, sound system and rave communities.
“As a result, I realised that the film could only ever show so much of such a rich and interesting cultural history, so the notion of an exhibition, allowing many of the contributors to the film to tell their own stories came about.”
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/bristol-venue-host-legendary-90s-7034326
