Vale Earth Fair celebrates 50 years of growth

The Channel Islands longest-running music festival the Vale Earth Fair is celebrating its 50-year anniversary.

The first event in 1976 involved local bands on a single stage inside the Vale Castle in the north of Guernsey with power for the stage and speakers needing to be sourced from a nearby business.

In 2026, organisers planned to have six stages around the castle site with bands from Jersey and the UK due to perform including headliner the Orb, but due to forecast high winds the event was moved to several indoor venues.

The Vale Earth Fair Collective - the group of volunteers that organise the festival - promotes music and the arts in the islands through community events.

Funds from those events are used to support the music festival while also raising awareness of humanitarian causes.

The profit from the annual music event is given to charitable and humanitarian causes - this year it is due to be shared between The Burma Campaign UK, the Linda Norgrove Foundation, and domestic abuse charity Safer.

Tom Girard, BBC Introducing presenter and a musician who has played at the festival and regularly attends, said his first was in 1999 and "there's been some amazing moments".

He said: "The music brings people together and just the range of music that's on offer has been amazing over the years from brand new bands you've never heard of from both islands and further afield, through to big name acts.

"It's such a big part of the community calendar every year now."

He described it as always having a "good vibe".

Errol Groves, who died in 2019, was one of the founders of the Vale Earth Fair and a bar he ran at the festival is called Errol's Bar in his honour.

His daughter Ellen Groves, said the family grew up going to the festival and she had recently come across one of her father's notebooks that had a "mock-up" of the first poster.

"In there was a list of all the volunteers so I've been tracing back trying to find out how dad bought it altogether on that long, hot summer of 76," she said.

Groves said the tagline for the festival was "a local event with a global conscience" which had always been the case since the beginning.

She said the earliest festival she could remember was in the late 80s, and now takes her own children to the event.

Bob Delbridge, who is on the line-up to perform at the festival with his band The Bapchilds appeared at the very first event in his two-man-band called the Friendly Folk.

"I remember going up there and seeing them build the stage which was done out of scaffolding and pallets and things like that," he said.

"I recall there was no electricity. They threw a long cable down into the quarry and someone down there plugged it in for them."

Charity partner Mark Farmaner said the annual event had been raising funds and given direct support to the Burma Campaign UK for decades.

He said: "That's the amazing thing about Vale Earth, it's not just a fantastic music event, but the profits all go to good causes."

Farmaner said in the afternoon, families with their children were having picnics, and by the evening, when the bands were playing, the castle was packed with people dancing and singing.

Jade Kershaw, a collective member who has been volunteering at the festival for 19 years, said it was a beautiful event where people could come together.

"People can just celebrate being themselves in a relaxed environment to enjoy some music and some socialising.

"It's a really beautiful place for that and that's why I keep coming back and want to be involved in it because it relies on volunteers, the community and it wouldn't happen without that.

"It's a really special place."

The 2026 fair had a major change when forecast high winds meant it had to be moved indoors.

Organisers said they moved as much as they could to venues throughout town to allow things to go ahead.

Refunds were offered, but organisers also added on social media that they were thanking anyone who had not requested their money back "to help support us during this very strange, unprecedented year of VEF".

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