Wilderness Festival 2024 preview: The highlight of the Great British Summer returns
From headline acts Michael Kiwanuka and Bicep to a food programme featuring some of the country’s most celebrated chefs, here’s why this bucolic event is the hot-ticket to cop for August
Words: Gentleman's Journal
From 1–4 August, Wilderness festival, one of the UK’s most colourful summertime celebrations, will take place at Cornbury Park, in Oxfordshire.
The four-day, 10,000-capacity event will be headlined by BRIT-winning and Grammy-nominated musician Michael Kiwanuka, iconic English dance music legends Faithless and Belfast-bred DJ dup Bicep.
Moreover, further electronic, house and dance heroes, including Barry Can't Swim, Alison Goldfrapp and Spooky Cash-Cash are slated to play, guaranteeing to have you dancing well into the early hours.
This being set in the Oxfordshire countryside, few festivals are as bucolic as Wilderness, whose premises comprise extensive parkland and meadows, ancient woodlands and Lake Wilderness – so, although live music may be the focal for the weekend, festivalgoers can also look forward to activities that run the gamut from wild swimming and boating to foraging and fire cooking.
Partly billed as a festival where different strands of culture collide together, the Wilderness weekend will also entail an arts programme – which will feature a falconry experience, plus jewellery making and calligraphy workshops – as well as a wide breadth of culinary events and banquets, including food by: Claude Bosi, Meerha Sodha, Rafael Cagali and Ben Lippett. Guests can even try their hands at pickling, cocktail making and sake tasting.
To complete the holistic experience, a wellbeing programme has also been confirmed, and will allow ticket holders to experience singular events and activities, including everything from bodyweight exercises to paddleboard yoga to creative writing.
This year’s Wilderness will be the programme’s thirteenth edition since it was inaugurated in 2011, and it will follow from last year’s extraordinary event, which was headlined by The Chemical Brothers and Christine and the Queens.
Ticket sorted? Now read our guide to festival style…
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