Kelburn Garden Party marks World Day for Cultural Diversity

To start off, can you tell us about Kelburn Garden Party and what makes it one of Scotland’s most unique music and arts festivals?

The Kelburn Garden Party is a unique, independent, magical music and arts festival. It is an annual explosion of colour, creativity, and culture in the grounds and glen around a 13th century painted castle on Scotland’s spectacular West Coast.

Established in 2009, the festival is renowned for featuring a high quality and diverse range of musical styles across 10 stages. It is programmed with the help of a revolving cast of Scottish guest curators from across the scene. This means the line-up is always fresh and exciting, with a strong focus on homegrown talent, alongside hand-picked guests from around the world.

The music programme is augmented by a feast of creative happenings and fun attractions embedded around the site. This includes a huge range of interactive art installations, living theatre, pop-up parties, glen walks, waterfall plunge pools, poetry, workshops, cabaret, and downright surreal happenings. Kelburn Garden Party is a family-friendly, magical cultural safari for the mind, body and soul.

Kelburn Garden Party. © Kelburn Garden Party

Kelburn is well known for its diverse music programmes and art installations. How would you describe your team’s approach to cultural diversity when curating such a lineup?

It’s simple really, we have a strong understanding and appreciation for club culture. This is often the engine of progressive musical expression and inclusion; so this very much informs our booking policy. And we just like music from diverse backgrounds – we like music and art that is fresh, exciting, funky and with heaps of soul.

To achieve a diverse offering, the programming approach is to try to prioritise artists from marginalised or under-represented backgrounds relative to your traditional festival line-ups. The aim is to give over the majority of the programme to such acts. Whilst there’s always a balance in maintaining a broad appeal for festival goers, this approach means we usually end up with a well balanced and quite unique programme.

We find then that the programme attracts a more diverse and curious audience, as well as the interest of other creatives, promoters and artists from marginalised creative communities. They then apply to get involved, leading to a strong positive feedback loop.

Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness from Soweto, South Africa play funk, hip-hop and psychedelic Afro-pop with punk rock energy, and will perform at Kelburn Garden Party 2025. © Kelburn Garden Party

Can you share examples of how Kelburn platforms a diverse range of artists and communities, both on stage and behind the scenes?

I think the line-up itself is the best example - you can explore the whole programme on our new website! Our approach to putting it together is described above. But beyond this, a key strategy is our use of guest curators. We understand that to keep your finger on the pulse, you need ask those who are actually making cultural headway in the clubs and venues all year round to come on board to programme. So each year we give over probably around 30 - 50% of stage time to guest curators from various underground scenes, largely those considered under-represented.

This year these guest curators include Lezzer Quest (queer focused club night), Kin-Tu (BIPOC focused agency/label), baile/baile (Ullapool based club night), Rebecca’s Records (female-focused jazz label) and The Skinny Magazine (who champion upcoming Scottish live music talent with a focus on inclusion).

Identifying and then agreeing parameters for these guest curator spots is a year-round task and it forces us to keep abreast of what is happening in the Scottish underground music/club scene. But given our reputation for inclusion and exciting programming, we are blessed to say that many people now come to us to request involvement, which we are always open to. To use a buzz-word, our approach is the antithesis of “gatekeeping”.

Baque Luar, London-based collective of female and non-binary vocalists and percussionists from diverse backgrounds, will be performing at Kelburn Garden Party 2025. © Baque Luar

You have been involved in the Scottish festival industry for nearly sixteen years now, how has Scotland evolved in this time to become more inclusive?

We see a lot more artists and collectives empowered to create, put on events and found labels etc. At least within the bounds of the festival scene, society appears to have become more tolerant, supportive of each other, while whole-heartedly backing recent movements such as Me Too, Black Lives Matter and trans-rights.

When we started out, most music festivals either fell on the hippy-dippy, DIY or mainstream end of the spectrum, and there wasn’t much in between. While many festivals have fallen by the wayside, especially since the pandemic, the ones that are left cover a wide range of styles and audiences, are more professional, and strive to be safe spaces for free self-expression. Arguably the same can be said for some club spaces too.

Kelburn Garden Party. © Kelburn Garden Party

As leaders in promoting cultural diversity, what advice would you give to other festivals or events aiming to deepen their commitments to inclusivity?

Don’t gatekeep. Go out there, see what is happening year-round in the towns and cities.

Don’t rely on rosters from agents or your own social groups, and if you find anything exciting, invite them to get involved. Always look to what the next generation have in store.

Aim to fill all your headline slots with acts from marginalised communities, and then you will end up with at least half.

Innovative producer, spoken word artist, promoter, and activist Supermann will perform at Kelburn Garden Party 2025. © Supermann

Finally, Kelburn Garden Party 2025 is shaping up to be another fantastic edition of the festival. With everything we’ve spoken about today, what can a new visitor to Kelburn expect from their first experience?

They can expect to have their mind blown! Yes it’s a bit of a cliché, but we believe we are at the forefront in terms of our attention to detail into our musical and artistic offering, augmenting what is already a magical location. It then becomes a complete cultural, creative, artistic, natural wonderland for one weekend, showcasing the very best the Scottish underground has to offer. And lots of dancing!

Kelburn Garden Party at night. © Kelburn Garden Party