Music: Nova Festival

The new kid on the Sussex festival block announce their exciting line-up of music and much, much more!

Following in the footsteps of the successful Meadowlands Festival (which had the indirect effect of banishing any lingering ghosts of Beachdown Festival in the process), Nova Festival means there are now two arts and music type festivals in the Sussex area.

Created by one of The Big Chill founders, Katrina Larkin, along with Big Chill veteran Victoria Burns, Nova Festival of Arts & Music takes place over four days in Bignor Park, Pulborough, and as well as music it features art, theatre, comedy, spoken word, film and, of course, stuff for kids to do.

Possibly taking their name from either a cataclysmic nuclear explosion on a star, or maybe from a legendary women’s magazine of the ’60s/’70s, Nova features a strong line up of music, with the main Valley Stage hosting the likes of Jessie Ware, Ghostpoet, Fink, Speech Debelle, Crazy P, tUnE-YaRdS, Fionn Regan and the Phenomenal Handclap Band. Sofar Sessions will also be here, with some kind of makeshift living room as their stage and featuring the likes of Anna Phoebe, Bird Radio, Indigo Earth, We Were Evergreen and The Staves. And the Nest Collective are organising campfire Sessions with acoustic and folk based performances from the likes of Carrie Tree, Balina Whalers and Lewes’s Vic and Tina Smith.

DJs were always a major part of The Big Chill and Nova follows in that tradition with the likes of Chris Coco, Big Chill co-founder Pete Lawrence, Norman Jay, Zero 7, Belle and Sebastian, Soul Jazz, Mixmaster Morris, DJ Food and Tim ‘Love’ Lee.

Along with a strong line of theatre and comedy (that includes Abandoman, Ginger & Black, Pappy’s, John Hegley and Late Night Gimp Fight), spoken word (with the likes of Joe Dunthorne, Clive Arrowsmith and Andrew Kitting) and art (including Doug Fishbone’s Adventureland Golf whereby artists such as Jake Chapman and Brian Griffiths have been invited to design a ‘hole’, and Rankin’s and Damien Hirst’s film collaboration Myths, Monsters and Legends), Nova is an exciting addition to the small scale festival circuit.

Bignor Park, Pulborough, 5–8 July, £139/£100 weekend tickets