Bournville, June 24th
Full set of 44 photos

Oh wow. The Bournville Maypole. What can I say?

As you know by now Bournville is a slightly odd place. Originally a model village set up by the Cadbury family in the late 19th Century it’s now part of the urban sprawl of greater Birmingham and yet manages to maintain a unique personality that other consumed areas struggle to hold on to. Part of this is due to the Village Trust who enforce strict rules within the ward (no pubs, no supermarkets, no unauthorised modifications to buildings) and part of it is because the residents, who cross all classes, like it that way.

One way of looking at Bournville is as a suburb with pretensions of viliage-ness and this striving for some idealised vision of rural country life has some very odd, if well intentioned and ultimately beneficial, results.

Nowhere is this better illustrated that at the Bournville Village Festival. Last week I was at the Kings Heath festival which was a very different beast made up of a ramshackle collection of local activities that really represented the community as a whole. From the cheezy compare singing karaoke to fill the gaps to the hoards of kids from the many dance schools doing their routines it was, in spirit, just like the chaotic village fetes I remember from my youth. Bournville, on the other hand, seemed to be taken from the “How to put on a traditional English village festival just like in the olden days” book, which isn’t to say it was false or contrived or misguided. It was as vibrant and inclusive and representative as the Kings Heath one, just very very different. Remember, 100+ years ago there was nothing here but fields and a few farms. Bournville itself is a construct so it follows that everything else will be made up, including tradition.

The Maypole dance, now over 100 years old, is the lynch-pin in understanding the wonder of Bournville. Lasting an hour and featuring over 130 local children in costume it runs through an elaborate sequence crowning the Festival Queen, a local beauty chosen by a select group of three to, well, I’m not sure what she does exactly but there she is. Our queen. (Actually, if I remember rightly, she assists in turning on the Christmas lights. Which is something.) While other areas may crown a May Queen of some sort nowhere takes the ceremony quite as seriously as Bournville.

Thinking about it, this sort of thing is usually done as some kind of Heritage Tourism, putting on a show for the public to illustrate “what things were like back then” with a reenactment of some ritual long forgotten. This was not heritage, for Bournville has no real history past 1879. This is current. This is now. Those watching were not being educated or entertained in a dispassionate sense – they were intrinsically part of it.

To fully comprehend the glory of this spectacle I’d encourage you to work through my photos. Due to some high level connections on the committee (my landlord) I was able to gain access to the balcony of the pavilion overlooking the arena – a rare privilege not granted to many. Look at the photos and remember at all times this is taking place in a suburb of Birmingham, the second largest urban sprawl in the country. Look at them and marvel at the fact that this actually happens.

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Next week, in my summer tour of the local festivals and related events, sees the Cotteridge Festival on Saturday (with Misty’s Big Adventure playing) and the Moseley Music in the Park festival on Sat and Sunday (I’ll only be doing Sunday, obviously). Mayhap I’ll see you there?