Spirit of Electric Picnic

The Body & Soul village, built around a stone and wood music stage, will be at the heart of the festival this weekend, says Richard Fitzpatrick

ELECTRIC Picnic is not about the headline acts. It’s about the setting and the ambience, particularly in the Body & Soul village, which opened in 2006, two years after Electric Picnic began. Body & Soul, with its amphitheatre and art installations, its hand-carved stages, leaves, vines and corners of calm, represents what is great about the main event.

Body & Soul is the brainchild of Avril Stanley. “I really wanted to build a permanent stage within the Body & Soul village at the Electric Picnic festival,” says Ms Stanley, “because a big part of what inspires Body & Soul is that we build our own stages and infrastructure, as much as possible, so that you’re watching a band on a beautifully bespoke main stage as opposed to a big, ugly metal orbit.