For a sponsor-free festival, Brainchild punches far above its weight. It has made its lack of funding its greatest strength, by relying exclusively on volunteers and inviting everyone, including its punters, to become personally involved in the festival. The result is an event with the character of a community co-operative: the love and feeling that goes into it every year is palpable, from the musical programme, to the site decoration, right down to the food stalls.

With just under a thousand attendees this year, it’s still intimate and relaxed. The focus swung just marginally towards music but it has always been a multi-arts festival, so film, comedy and spoken word poetry were all strongly represented and anyone looking for a more stimulating festival experience could also attend debates, panels, workshops or lectures by industry professionals and published writers. Over sixty artists contributed works for the decoration of the site, many of them interactive, making the festival grounds as vibrant and diverse as the activities that sprawled through it.

There were no big names on the musical programme, although it did include a fair few acts that will have caught the eye of anyone into their emerging music. By targeting up-and-comers, including some who have been tipped as breaking artists, Brainchild were able to put together a line-up that, qualitatively, could rival any major festival, without breaking the bank. The music spread over three stages: the main stage, the Forest Shack and the Steez Cafe – the last curated by the well-respected SE London collective of the same name. Between the three, they covered a disparate but fulfilling range of genres.

The main stage on the whole stuck to danceable roots, dub and afrobeat. This was where the large bands with a lot of members played, bringing the power and volume. These included the many vocalists and horns of the SE Dub Collective, who rocked the crowd with ease, King Nommo’s huge brass section and imposing vocalist Khadim Saar, or all-female Nérija, who didn’t need any vocals to blow away the audience. All of them equipped with monstrous bass overdrive and body-shaking percussion. Big-band was the trend here but not the rule. Alfa Mist and Barney Artist were a major highlight, playing a wildly varied and collaborative set where they introduced a new player almost every song. They strayed from the danceable into the musically abstract but were one of the most impressive and rewarding performances on the main stage as a result. United Vibrations, who closed the stage on Sunday, had only four members, but played one of the most charged sets of the weekend. How they managed to rival the sound and energy made by bands with ten members or more is a mystery.

DJs and producers performed almost exclusively at the Forest Shack, where beats went on until 2am. The pleasure of a spaceship-like stage in a forest until the early morning, cannot be adequately described – particularly when the space has been decorated to be as psychedelic as possible. O’Flynn was irresistibly funky and Brazilian DJ collective Sonido Tropico irresistibly lush. The Twinkat Soul Takeover covered a whole blissful evening and was typically eclectic for the programme of electronic music, although perhaps the festival would benefit from a bigger sound system in the forest next year. This was also home to one of the most popular installations, Torus, a dome you could enter and sing into, which would convert your notes into colour around its walls, allowing you to visualise music. Amplified music, regrettably, had to end at 2am – but the organisers got around this by bringing a silent disco into the forum, which was licensed until 3am. Most notable here was Bridgey B’s mammoth garage set on the final night – which ended at exactly the legally stipulated time and not a moment later.

The Steez Cafe could also run late and what they lacked in forest-based psychedelia they made up for with musicality that was, on the whole, jaw-dropping. Their programme focused largely on jazz fusion and hip-hop, although they threw in some curve-balls, like the staggering afrobeat group Kokoroko. Steez belies Brainchild’s roots in the south-east London music community: a tight-knit group of players, talented MCs and producers were all in attendance. Groups like the Ezra Collective and MVC are mind-blowing players in their own right but they were also all able to freely and seamlessly collaborate with one another. SumoChief’s SpaceRhyme Continuum, where the stage was opened to anyone in the crowd, had the potential to be a disaster, but instead was a testament to the creative community Brainchild has become, and one of the most enjoyable and enriching moments of the whole festival.

Brainchild is still small, affordable and original. The programme was jammed with very polished acts and talented musicians, although none of them were household names – it’s not so much a ‘go to see a band you know’ as a ‘go to discover bands you would see again’ situation. What gives it an edge are the spontaneous and open-forum moments, where creation happens right in front of you and you are invited to contribute. The festival has a hum of creativity and artistry running through it, along with an openness which makes it very difficult to avoid becoming a participant, rather than a punter. The friendly atmosphere of inclusion this fosters makes it truly one of a kind. Fair warning – attend Brainchild with caution, because chances are it will ruin mainstream festivals for you.
Ben Noble