You can learn a range of skills and enjoy the great outdoors at this week-long celebration of traditional crafts
The Treehouse Festival is a week-long event in Norfolk where visitors get the opportunity to learn new skills, prepare and eat delicious meals made using locally sourced ingredients, get involved with eco building projects and attend live acoustic music nights and campfires. This all takes place in beautiful fields around the recreation of an Iron Age round house. This year’s festival takes place from 19 to 25 August.
Traditional crafts
At the Treehouse Festival there are no ‘demonstrations’ in the normal sense, every workshop is interactive and gives you the opportunity to get your hands dirty and have a go. A range of heritage crafts are represented, such as whittling, willow weaving, basket making, blacksmithing, wool spinning and glass blowing. All materials are provided. You can spend as much or as little time as you like mastering new skills, and then take your creations – and maybe some new hobbies – home with you at the end of the week.
Eco building
The Festival grew out of a group of friends deciding to build a real treehouse in their spare time. Every summer they’d spend a week or so camping out at Brandon House Farm, working on the treehouse’s spiral staircase, its balcony or its roof. More friends came along to join in. Eventually even more friends came, who didn’t particularly want to build but wanted to enjoy the camping and community spirit that quickly became something very special.
Sadly, the original treehouse had to be dismantled, but rather than mourn its loss and change the name of the Festival, the organisers decided to keep the name and let the Festival be a celebration of the departed treehouse, and the special community spirit it brought.
The tradition of eco-building projects continued, resulting in the Iron Age roundhouse. Now, each year there is the opportunity to be part of a big building project using hand tools to create an eco-structure.
For more information and to buy tickets for this year’s festival, visit:
treehousefestival.co.uk
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF TREEHOUSE FESTIVAL