Alistair Gentry - Micro Festivals at National Forest Company

What happens when you scale art down, slow it down, and centre it in the everyday?

In Coalville this summer, Alistair Gentry answered that question. His micro-festivals, commissioned by the National Forest Company, were small by design. They worked slowly, attentively, and at human scale. They asked people to pause, to notice, to connect: with themselves, with each other, with the non-human world woven through their town.

These gatherings reminded me, as both participant and evaluator, that small is not the opposite of ambitious. The ambition here lay in depth, not breadth; in centring conversations about belonging, identity, and nature that are often too complex for large-format programmes to hold.

Alistair has a gift for creating these conditions. He doesn’t rush people through a programme. He invites them into dialogue, into shared authorship of meaning. And it is in these slow, relational exchanges that long-term cultural impact often takes root.

The National Forest Company should be commended for recognising this. For resisting the pressure to equate scale with value. For backing the kind of work that may not dominate headlines, but that changes the way communities see themselves in relation to place.

In my evaluation work with the National Forest, I’ve seen the evidence for this first-hand. Participant reflections, observation, and community feedback consistently show that it is these smaller, slower encounters that create the most meaningful and enduring impacts.

If we really want culture to support resilience, wellbeing, and care for the natural world, then we need to invest in the small and the slow, as much as the spectacular.

Alistair’s work: https://lnkd.in/e35JxgZn

About the micro-festivals: https://lnkd.in/e7uig3tS