SPOONFEST is designed first and foremost to be fun and to be inspirational.
Over the last few years spooncarving has come a long way in the UK and grown in popularity. The idea is to bring all those carvers together – from raw beginners to seasoned professionals – for three days celebrating the wooden spoon.
Everyone arrives Thursday evening sets up tents sorts food then 7.30pm we have our official opening ceremony and introduce all our workshop leaders.
A nearby barn will house the GALLERY. Every year we have something new and inspiring here, be sure to check out the event of the year.
There will be areas for you to sit and carve together chatting, exchanging ideas and SHARING SKILLS. We will provide plenty of great carving wood, chopping blocks and free tea and coffee. Large barns will keep us dry if it rains, and house talks. For the evenings there will be local beer and hay bales round campfires, bring musical instruments if you like.
FREE DEMONSTRATIONS AND TALKS will also take place throughout the weekend, these will be pre-arranged so if you have something you can offer that you think may be of interest please do get in touch. Over the years talks have ranged from knife sharpening and bark sheath making to correct posture for safe carving and a talk about the history of monastic spooncarvers.
On Friday we will have basic knife carving techniques WORKSHOPS, where anyone can learn to use a knife safely and efficiently, all run by excellent teachers lasting 2 hours each. There will be a small charge (£20) for the workshops – payable on the day to the workshop leaders. On Saturday and Sunday we will have some more advanced workshops in various subjects, including advanced spoon design, making paint and decorating spoons, chip carving and advanced axe technique. Full details of all workshops will be available on the line up page.
SPOONSHOP will be open set hours through the weekend and be the place to buy and sell spoons. Personally we can not resist a good spoon and it seems daft to have all these amazing carvers together and not offer the chance to buy some of their work. Anyone can offer work for sale through spoon shop (spoons only) and there will be a very small commission (10%) to cover admin costs.
This year, we are pre-selling evening meal tickets. You will not be able to purchase these meals on the day – they must be pre-booked via Tito by Sunday 30th June 8pm.
The food we will provide for the three evenings will be:
Red lentil Tarka Dal, with onion baji (made with gram flour), crunchy fresh vegetable slaw, minty coconut yoghurt
Chipotle Pinto bean stew with sweetcorn, guacamole and corn chips.
Vegetable Thai Red curry, with courgette pakora (made with gram flour), carrot and coriander slaw.
All served with Rice.
We will have a baps available from mid-morning, We expect to have fillings like bacon, cheese & pickle & houmous & beetroot. Price £4, to be paid on the day.
For those of you that need food first thing in the morning, we’ve heard folks have had great success bringing their own muesli & oatmilk
Other options
We have volunteers who do a pizza oven. All the profits from this go to charity. We tend to make around 80 pizzas a night but with 300 odd people on-site, we can’t feed everyone this way.
So, if you want to be sure of an evening meal on-site, your best option is to buy a food ticket. £25 for all 3 meals.
Two pubs are no more than a 10 min walk from the festival site, Rambler Inn and Nagshead, both serve food and have good information on their websites about food serving times and menus.
Obviously, many people thrive on pot noodles or even their own masterchef set up at their tent.
At 7pm we put all tools away and the bar opens. The CHARITY BAR is run by volunteers, serves excellent local beer from Farmers brewery and over the years we’ve raised over 20k for charity.
Edale is in the heart of the Peak District tourist area so there are B&B’s, holiday cottages and a youth hostel within walking distance for those that wish, but there is free camping on site along with portaloos, flush loos and running water for washing up.