6 August 2022
Beer & Berries 6 August 2022
SOIL
Buy your £6 tickets On the Door. Children under 12 go free.
Tickets ONLY available on the door. Cash and Card accepted
With your ticket book into the Talks, Workshops and Art programme
Celebrating the food and drink production of Angus this year we are thinking about Soil.
Our soils are an invaluable resource, they clean water, support biodiversity and they are the source of most of our food. When at their best they are rich complex structures beneath our feet, packed full of visible and not so visible life.
Buy a day ticket and book into any event, workshop and talk in the programme for free and stay with us for the early evening music programme with headliners KAPUTT.
The food stalls will be around the site and the events programme held in three tents as well as out and about in the Hospitalfield grounds. Download the Programme to Plan your day.
The Beer & Berries Festival grows each year, the programme for Soil has been planned in collaboration with Feast Journal and Angus Growers and Angus Soft Fruit, this continuing partnership makes for a bigger and better festival. Don’t forget to enter the Jam Competition, this year support by Mackay’s Jam.
Important moments within the programme include:
Artist Rehana Zaman was the recipient of our Studio Time Commission in 2021. Her work Rubus will be launched as a completed project at Hospitalfield in 2023. As part of the development of this work Zaman presents a performance and screening as part of the programme for Soil.
Image of potato fields around Hospitalfield. Photo taken by Cameron Smith via Drone.
3.30-4.30pm: Rehana Zaman – Rubus
Hospitalfield have commissioned Rehana Zaman to develop a new moving image work around our annual event Beer & Berries.
Zaman will present the first iteration of the piece under the working title Rubus. Orientated around rubus fruits (raspberries, blackberries, blueberries), the project takes up a multi-dimensional conversation on the social currencies and economies of modern agriculture. Developed over 2 years, the artist has undertaken extensive research in the region with visits to farms in Angus organised with Angus Growers and conversations with farmers, pickers and scientists at the James Hutton Institute.
This first iteration of Rubus will take place in the FEAST Tent on Saturday 6 August at Beer & Berries Festival and is supported by The Elephant Trust.
Encompassing moving image and performance, the art work invites writers and poets Seán Elder, Nat Raha and Daniella Valz Gen to dialogue with Al Qazwini’s The Wonders of Creation and the Oddities of Existing Things; an influential work of Islamic cosmography from the 12th century. These newly commissioned texts will orientate how relationships to land, configured through capital, are subverted and felt.
This project was initiated in 2020-1 as part of the Hospitalfield’s Studio Time Commissions, supporting artists with funded time to develop ideas and research for new art works to be presented at Hospitalfield. Zaman has extensively researched with cultivators local to Hospitalfield in Arbroath to examine the enduring legacies of colonial capitalist land use and ownership in the UK from multinational monopolies on farming practices and plant patents, to the relationship between the Scottish clearances and plantations in South Asia.
Image credit: Giants, Rehana Zaman, 2022
11am-4pm: Talks, Discussions, Workshops and Activities
SOIL: The Programme takes place in three tents
FEAST with Hospitalfield Talks Tent
FEAST with Hospitalfield’s programme for Beer & Berries developed with Hospitalfield shares knowledge and practical know-how of how to engage more closely with the complexities of soil. From looking carefully at the structure of different soil types to listening to the sounds of the soil and reflecting upon the history and poetics of composted earth.
Contributions include:
12.30-2pm: A Grounding in Sound – Workshop focusing on deep listening, sound walking and an introduction to field recording led by Ryan Woods and Hayley Suviste from The Manchester Ear.
1-2pm: GROW Observatory – A talk on the Citizens’ Observatory that has empowered people and whole communities to take action on soils and climate across Europe with Professor Mel Woods Design and Making, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design.
2-3pm: Sounding Out Soils and Crops – A talk on soil acoustics with Emeritus Professor Keith Attenborough from The Institute of Acoustics, The Open University & Associate Professor Shahram Taherzadeh from the School of Engineering & Innovation, The Open University.
3.30-4pm: Rubus – new screening and performance by Rehana Zaman exploring the social currencies and economies of modern agriculture. Supported by Angus Growers and the James Hutton Institute. Featuring contributions from writers and poets Seán Elder, Nat Raha and Daniella Valz Gen and references to Al Qazwini’s The Wonders of Creation and the Oddities of Existing Things
Angus Growers & Angus Soft Fruits Tent
This year’s Beer & Berries presents the inaugural Angus Growers Talks Tent – intended to give audiences the chance to hear from local producers about growing in the region. During the day, speakers will cover a range of subjects around farming, growing, soil and sustainability practices in farming.
Angus Growers & Angus Soft Fruits is a soft fruit producer organisation based in Arbroath on the East Coast of Scotland, in the heart of the traditional Scottish berry growing area. The Company is owned and managed by 17 growers, the majority in Angus, Perthshire and Fife, who grow a variety of fruits and other crops; we market their strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries and cherries. They specialise in producing fresh fruit for the major supermarkets, shops, restaurants and food and drinks manufacturers.
Contributions include:
12-1pm: Changing Landscapes led by East Seaton farm manager Allen Innes
2-3pm: Growing Matters led by Agronomist Dr Phillipa Dodds
3-4pm: More than Fruit led by Ethics and Sustainability Manager Dr Catherine Russell.
Making Things with Hospitalfield Workshop and Experiment Tent
This year’s Beer & Berries has a whole array of activities for people of all ages to participate in. From listening to soil, field recordings, soil safari, writing metaphors, foraging and drawing, your day will be full of learning, experimentation and joy.
Contributions include:
11.30am -1.30pm: Land Literacy – creative writing workshop led by artist Rachel Pimm
11.30am-1pm: Young Artist Club – Drawing and printing led by Young Artist Club and artists Becky Brewis and Persy Russell. More info coming soon.
12.30-2.30pm: A Soil Safari –microscopy, root microbiology, games and crafts led by Dundee scientists Carmen Escudero-Martinez and Senga Robertson-Albertyn
2.00-3.30pm: Eating Things – Foraging and drawing led by artist Sneha Solanki and children Rasa and Sona
FIELD Programme: Around and About Hospitalfield
11am-3pm: The Great Angus Market featuring the Stallholders from across Angus. Forecourt to Paddock.
11am & 2pm: Padlocks of Self-Love workshops by Sally Hackett. On the Garden lawn.
12pm-4pm: Soils-Habit-Plants – a film by Mikhail Lylov and Elke Marhöfer screened in the Fernery looking at less human-centered ways of looking at the world through soil and plants.
12pm onwards: DJs in the Forecourt.
12.30-3.30pm: Afternoon Teas on the front lawn with Mackays.
4pm: Jam Competition with Mackays. Announcement of winners on the Front Lawn.
5-7pm: Live Music from KAPUTT and Maranta. On the Paddock Stage.
11am - 3pm: Meet the Stallholders
Stallholders make Beer & Berries. This is your opportunity to meet local producers, purchase fresh produce and try something new. These are some of the Stallholders attending this year:
Appley Ever After Downiemill | Facebook
Artisana Brownies | Brownies By Post
Carnoustie Distillery – Spirits Info Home distilled custom flavours
Fournos – authentic Greek food (facebook.com)
Fudge & Fancies (facebook.com)
Highland Boundary | Wild & Botanical Scottish Spirits
Hope Organic Garden SC020928 – Providing work experience for adults with learning disabilities
Handmade Luxury Confectionery | Kinnaird Kitchen
MòR Beers – Scottish Real Ale Brewed in Dundee (morbeers.co.uk)
Owen’s Angus Jams | Order Homemade Scottish Jams Online (owensangusjams.co.uk)
Plants with Purpose – plants with purpose (plants-with-purpose.uk)
Sacred Grounds Coffee Company – Sacred Grounds Coffee Company (sacred-grounds.coffee)
Kristina & Robert (@saela_ceramics) • Instagram photos and videos
Shed 35 Brewery – Carnoustie’s Local Craft Ale Brewery
Tayport Distillery | Gin, Vodka, Liqueur
5pm: Live Music from KAPUTT and Maranta
Maranta Based in Edinburgh, Maranta are vocalists, multi- instrumentalists, songwriters and producers Callum Govan and Gloria Black. They were brought together in 2018 through friendship, a love for melodic, leftfield pop and dance music, with a mission to take visceral, textured and infectious songs to the dancefloor. Maranta are colourful, with pleasingly contrasting tones, enjoying plenty light. The plants are rhizomatic and so too the songs are structured without hierarchy between melody, instrument and vocal. Or perhaps Maranta are named after the 16th century Italian botanist and literary theorist (to whom the plant’s name is attributed), who believed in art’s superiority over philosophy: more expressing, less reflecting…more doing, less pondering…which could account for the immediate appeal of these infectious pop songs. Either way they are very good!
Maranta’s latest EP Your Love was released this month as part of Lost Map Records’ Postcard series, with a further EP Deux Pleasure set for release on Lost Map later this summer.
DJ’s:
Guto Pryce (Super Furry Animals)
Mark Wallace – a stalwart of the Dundee music scene. He began Beat Quest downstairs in McGonnigals in 1995 alongside various club nights around the city, and this became home to a collective of obsessively curious DJs which continues in one form or another to this day. Mark is a talented music producer and a lecturer in Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone college of art and design.
4pm: Jam Competition
The Jam Competition returns to Beer and Berries. This year, Mackays Jams are celebrating the lavish Angus berry season by inviting you to produce a winning jam as determined by a fantastic team of judges including our very own Chef Manager, Simon Brown.
This year we have four categories:
Mini Jam Maker
Tipsy Jam Maker
Traditional Jam Maker
Modern Jam Maker
All entries must be received by 29 July.
You can drop your jam off at:
Mackays, James Chambers Road, Arbroath, DD11 3LR
Hospitalfield House, Arbroath, DD11 2NH
DC Thomson, 2 Albert Square, Dundee, DD1 1DD
Any questions to info@mackays.com
Entry fee: £2
All fees are donated to Marie Curie Cancer Care
12.30-3.30pm: Afternoon Tea with Mackays
Join us for Afternoon Tea for 2 on the Lawn to celebrate the Beer & Berries Festival with Mackays. This year, we have again teamed up with local jam specialists Mackays, who have been making their distinctive range of preserves, marmalades and curds here in Arbroath for decades.
Book your place to enjoy a specially designed Afternoon Tea featuring a selection of beautifully prepared sandwiches, freshly baked scones and delicious cake served with tea/coffee of a glass of our favourite sparkling wine.
• Afternoon Tea for 2 served with Tea or Coffee: £20
• Afternoon Tea for 2 served with Sparkling Wine: £25
Please note that Afternoon Tea for 2 may only be booked as part of the Beer & Berries Festival, tickets for which are will be available from 1st July. Please see below to book Afternoon Tea for 2