26th May 2024 – Catton Hall, Derbyshire
Here’s a fantastic round-up review and photos by my partner in crime, Gregg, of this year’s festival on the Sunday. Go checkout his page – Shot By Both Sides Gig Photography
A quick search on the Bearded Theory website tells that this brilliantly diverse, multi-stage festival started life in 2007 as nothing more than a birthday celebration in a field behind a pub, with friends performing in honour of their friend, and grew from there. Over the years, their learning curve has been steep, but the rewards plenty, having picked up several well deserved accolades along the way for their efforts. 2024 sees them again in the running for festival of the year amongst other awards.
I find myself heading Southwards on my 2 hour drive from Greater Manchester to Catton Hall in South Derbyshire for my press and photographer passes on this quite grey and overcast Sunday Morning to experience what promises to be an epic day and my first day full of bands, DJ’s, epic fancy dress and beards at one of the most family-friendly Indie/punk/Reggae/dub/DJ’d/dance-themed festivals around. Each year Bearded Theory has adopted a theme, with Sunday being fancy dress day for that theme, and I could be forgiven for thinking that this years theme was “Mud”, because this years weather hadn’t been too kind to the organisers or revellers – It made everywhere tough going trying to park once I’d picked up my accreditation from a very helpful & cheerful trio at the portacabin on my way onto site. Not to worry too much though, because those risk assessing geniuses behind Bearded Theory had it all in hand – Not only with a keen and ever smiling team of “dragger outers”, but also with handy reminders displayed on the staged backdrops.
A twenty minute wade through muddy walkways and I’m on the festival site. It’s quite huge, with all stages that aren’t the main stage within marquees to try and eliminate sound bleed-over from other stages, and it works really well. First bands start around 12, so being on site an hour early afforded me good mooching time at the myriad of stalls offering pretty much everything from Onion Bhaji wraps to full homeopathic therapies and massage and everything in between. There are demonstrations of various crafts and arts too, as well as opportunities for old and young alike to get tuition on things like weaving with willow, making your own carved honeysuckle staff using traditional methods, jewellery making etc. Each marquee offered such a vast array of different genres of music, comedy, poetry etc I was truly spoilt for choice as I struggled from location to location, avoiding the day’s showers to try and protect my camera lol, but speaking of the music, I know that some of you would like to see reviews of all of the bands and artists that appeared, but I was only there on the Sunday, and with some 46 bands, DJ sets and acts across several stages on this day alone I’d got myself to that stage where I was walking into a marquee or to the main stage, took shots, then waded through mud cautiously to my next destination, took shots, then I was off again. To emphasise my point, I covered almost 13Km Sunday and I can definitely feel it the next day, but it was absolutely worth it, and I am looking forward to next year’s epic festival!
Enjoy my assortment of photos below, and see you in the field next year.
Get your tickets to 2025 festival here – Bearded Theory Festival
Cobspix Photography 