The stark and ancient beauty of Dartmoor is world-renowned. Its power to stir a deep emotional connection in people was evidenced by the thousands who converged on the moor in January 2023, fighting for their right to roam freely across those wild landscapes and camp under those wide starry skies.
Now a new festival – taking place in May this year – will explore and celebrate Dartmoor’s history and mythology, the art and music it inspires and the spirit it awakens in people.
The Dartmoor Tors Festival has been set up by local couple Alex Murdin and Sophie Pierce, an artist and writer respectively, who have lived on Dartmoor for over 25 years.
During the late May bank holiday weekend, Friday 23 to Monday 26, ticketed events will take place in Ashburton and at locations around the moor. Folk music legend Seth Lakeman will be headlining on the Saturday night; other speakers and performers include the international artist Garry Fabian Miller, novelist Fiona Williams, poet/artist Sean Borodale, storytellers Sara Hurley and Lisa Schneidau, and the ‘dark and wild’ Beltane Border Morris side.
The festival website explains that the event ‘will bring together thinkers and creatives who are interested in natural landscapes and how we relate to them.
“It will be a celebration of the power and beauty of places seen as wild and ancient around Britain, and an exploration of why and how they provoke an emotional response.”
At the time of writing, the legal issue of access rights and wild camping on Dartmoor is still awaiting a decision from the Supreme Court. The festival will feature a panel discussion with veteran campaigner Kate Ashbrook, historian and author Matthew Kelly, social scientist, writer and co-founder of The Stars Are For Everyone, Lewis Winks, and author Guy Shrubsole who is a co-founder of Right to Roam.
The festival programme offers several guided walks, including an expedition to Belstone with archaeologist Alan Endacott to see one of the ‘new’ prehistoric stone circles he discovered there last year, along with a fallen dolmen. There will be a sunrise walk to the Merrivale stone rows led by archaeoastronomer Carolyn Kennett and Dartmoor expert Paul Rendell, a Myths of the Moor walk around Hound Tor with live storytelling in the places where the tales are set, and a walking and drawing morning at Haytor Down with Dartmoor-based contemporary artist and moorland guide Kay Pearson. Additional walks take place later in the week, after the main festival activities are over.
There is also an art exhibition, Lore and Land III, at the Field System Gallery in Ashburton, with the chance to join a workshop creating artefacts inspired by land art, psychogeography and nature.
The creative artists behind the Dartmoor Tors Festival
The idea for the festival – which has the support of Dartmoor National Park – arose from the work Sophie and Alex have been doing for the last decade. Sophie is a former BBC journalist and the author of five books including Wild Swimming Walks Dartmoor and South Devon and a memoir, The Green Hill: Letters to a Son, a meditation on love and loss set on Dartmoor and the surrounding landscape. Alex is an artist and curator who has been drawing the tors and also has an ongoing project, called A Thousand Stones, to depict Dartmoor’s longest stone row. They have worked together on a new illustrated book about Dartmoor coming out in April called Rock Idols: a guide to Dartmoor in 28 tors, and will be giving a talk on it at the festival, along with author Wyl Menmuir who writes about the elemental forces of the natural world.
Sophie said: “We feel a powerful connection to Dartmoor in both our emotional lives and our creative work, and we wondered why there was no annual gathering to celebrate Dartmoor and share ideas about our responses to this extraordinary place. So we decided to start one.”
She hopes the walks, conversations and performances will enable people to ‘dive deep’ into the diverse experiences and special qualities that Dartmoor has to offer, and that the festival will also bring in extra trade for local businesses.
Tickets for all the events will be available via the Dartmoor Tors Festival website from Saturday 22 February at 12 noon. Prices for the events at Ashburton Arts Centre have three cost categories – budget, middle and higher – while prices for the other events, such as walks, are set by the people running them, minus a small contribution towards Sophie and Alex’s admin and marketing costs.
Andy Williamson, Arts Director at Ashburton Arts Centre, said: “This festival celebrates the fabulous landscape and rich heritage of this unique part of England. It also shows that fantastic arts and culture of all kinds are alive and well here today, with Dartmoor’s ancient granite producing world-class music and art for the 21st century.”
