Putting Body & Soul into arts festival

THE Body & Soul Festival is becoming a fixture of the Irish summer.

It returns on Friday week for a solstice weekend beside the lake at Ballinlough Castle, Co Westmeath.

The festival, which grew out of a residency at Electric Picnic and has been a sell-out since its debut, in 2010, is the brainchild of Avril Stanley. The ethos owes much to ideas Stanley gathered while globetrotting in her 20s, to the Burning Man festival’s art installations and community living, in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, and to the two worlds of her childhood.