A Portrait of Greenbelt

Aim

Help us publish A Portrait of Greenbelt, with photos by Paul Chambers and reflections by Pádraig Ó Tuama, celebrating our Boughton years.

A little piece of Boughton to keep

During our years at Boughton House, we’ve brought a temporary world to life each year. Somewhere to believe in and belong to, where artistry, activism and belief intertwine. Now, as we say goodbye to our festival home for the last 12 years, we’re making something to help us remember it.

A Portrait of Greenbelt brings together photographs by long-time Greenbelter Paul Chambers and poetic reflections by festival friend Pádraig Ó Tuama. A beautiful art book celebrating the people, place and community that made our Boughton years what they were.

And we’d love your help to bring it into print and out into the world.

A community in the frame.

In 2023, our fiftieth festival year, Paul brought his wonderful collodion camera to Greenbelt. Over one busy weekend, he photographed 50 Greenbelters: fifty people to mark fifty years.

He used wet-plate (collodion) photography, a process dating back to the 1850s, in which each original portrait is made by hand on a prepared plate. It’s a wonderfully distinctive way of capturing a face, with all the care and attention that goes into making an individual image.

But the contact sheet of images sat in our inbox for a couple of years. Mainly because we couldn’t quite figure out how to do the work justice. Until last autumn, when we realised it would be the perfect way to mark our farewell to Boughton House.

Alongside the portraits, the book includes Paul’s larger-format landscapes of the beautiful grounds and views at Boughton. Together, they capture something of both the place we gathered and the people who gave it life.

Click the image below to see both large-format landscape prints.

Finding the words

We needed someone able to conjure words as delicate and poetic as the photography. Who better than festival friend Pádraig Ó Tuama? His wonderful reflections accompany the portraiture, offering another way into the people and place that the book celebrates.

We’re making the book itself with Beam Editions, a specialist art book publisher based in Nottingham. They’re already part of the Greenbelt family: you may know them from the Beam Cafe in the Orchard, where they’ve kept many of us happily caffeinated over the past few years.

Now they’re bringing us their experience of making gorgeous art books.

Click the image below for a free glimpse of a few pages from the book.

A book to spend time with

We want A Portrait of Greenbelt to be a pleasure to hold, browse and return to. Something to share with a friend, give as a gift or keep within reach when you fancy a little time back in the festival fields at Boughton House.

For Greenbelters, it will hold some familiar faces, landscapes and memories. For anyone discovering Greenbelt through its pages, it offers an encounter with a community through photography and words.

Why we’re crowdfunding

When we published FIFTY in 2023, your enthusiasm and generosity helped make it possible. We hope you’ll join us in making this next book a reality too.

The work on the creation and design is already done. We’re really excited about the way it’s come together. But now we need to commit to printing. And crowdfunding helps us work out how many books people actually want. By ordering now, you help us plan a sensible print run, without leaving hundreds of books sitting in boxes waiting for a home.

Crowdfunding provides a way of making something beautiful together – supporting the people behind it and using our resources carefully. Your backing will help us do this. 

Ultimately, we're festival-makers not book publishers – yet we’re committed to making this book as beautiful and timeless as it can be. As stewards of the festival, crowdfunding this very special project feels like the most responsible, sustainable way to properly mark our time at Boughton, while ensuring we stay focussed on our search for our next festival home and the time and investment required to make our move a success.

Choose something to keep. Or something to give. Or both.

A single copy of the book is available from £25. We’ve also made an A2 poster of the images for framing and postcards of the writing for sending – because the work is so strong it stands up wonderfully well outside of the pages of the book. Meanwhile, for art-lovers among you, there are also two limited edition giclee prints of Paul’s Glade Arena photographs.

You’ll find all the reward options below, so you can choose the one that suits you. We’ll be sending out orders in the first week of December. If you’ve been wondering what to get the Greenbelter in your life for Christmas, look no further.

Help us turn the page

Our crowdfunding campaign closes on 29 October, so choose your reward below now and help us make A Portrait of Greenbelt a reality.

The extra mile 

If you love the idea of this book and you'd like to chip in a little extra to help make it happen, please feel free! When you pick your reward you can make an extra donation (and add gift aid, if you want to, increasing your donation by 25%) in addition to the reward you choose (which can't be gift aided).

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 29th October 2026 at 12:49pm