HuG, our free entry Moorlands Green Arts Festival, celebrates its fifth anniversary when it returns to the Foxlowe on Saturday 28 June from 10.00am to 4.00pm.
This year we are celebrating all things hedgerows and verges. MCA is a partner in the Nature in Your Neighbourhood project, along with Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, Keele University, OUTSIDE Arts and SMDC, which supports communities in the Staffordshire Moorlands improve green spaces where they live and monitor habitat health.
As ever there will be a wide range of stalls showcasing a variety of arts and crafts using different materials, all produced with an environmental ethos.
We’re delighted that we’ll be joined this year by Kitsch ‘n Sync’s Hedge Heads. We’ll also have Leek Rock Choir, Jane and Eric Moulder (the PIVA Renaissance musicians), and Leek Morris, who will be dancing for us as part of their Leek Day of Dance, as well as festival favourites Young Phoenix Singers, One Million Fingers and the Leek U3A African drummers.
New stallholders include Projects from Pallets, run by environmental award winner, Chris Parr, and Waste Savvy Staffs’ Rescue Me, and festival regular Anthony Hammond will run a hedge laying demonstration in the Foxlowe garden.
Whatever your age, you’ll be able to take part in craft and other activities, including making hedgerow potions and tinctures (sprinkled with a little magic!). You might even be able to buy a little something for your own hedgerow or verge from our usual lovely plant stall run by Cina Zacune.
Local nature and environmental groups such as Staffordshire Wildlife Trust and Swifts of Leek will also be there. With poetry readings and a book stall, the spoken and written word will be represented too.
There will be something for everyone. Come along and get a wonderful green HuG!