The Good Life Experience
What is it: Billed as a festival like no other, The Good Life Experience takes place over a long autumn weekend on a castle estate in North Wales and has all the things that you’d hope to have in your regular life — great music, creative expression, inspirational books, time in the great outdoors, incredible food — to give you a taster of The Good Life. Founded by Cerys Matthews, Steve Abbot, and Charlie and Caroline Gladstone in 2014 to be ‘more than just’, from its starting point of “powerful, memorable and — most importantly — FUN experiences.”, it has since expanded to include Summer Camps, a dog-diving competition, and a range of activities for our grown-up inner children like fairground rides, ax throwing, and blacksmithing!
Why you’ll love it: Sometimes we think of The Good Life like our guide made in festival format: it has all the components that we try to weave together in the way that we approach the world: connection, nature, wellness, untethering, purpose, meaning, awe, creativity and doing good. All that is needed for our wellbeing.
Or see it like a favorite lifestyle magazine that makes all the things recommended and talked about happen in the real world rather than just on the page, so there’s the latest authors talking about their writings, top chefs cooking their recipes with us, sustainably produced fashion and small independent makers to shop, and travel spreads on glamping that you get to inhabit for a few nights. It's all there for real-world engagement.
Or consider it like how kids feel when they get to a theme park and want to do all the things and they have that squeaky voice and excitement inside, but here it’s us grown-ups (though many of us with our kids) wanting to do all the things too. On our list are floristry and weaving, dancing to new bands then star gazing, faery card reading, and campfire cooking sessions.
In short, The Good Life Experience is a playground of the thoughtfully curated and frankly just fun for the curious and the seekers among us.
What you need to know: Are we allowed to plan ahead yet? If so, booking a slot at The Good Life Experience is high on our list of things to do for making 2021 nothing like 2020. (Tickets are already available for next year’s festival taking place from 29 April to 2 May and the waitlist for them has already started — which we’re now also on, sigh).
How to bring this into your life: The Good Life Experience is not just a festival anymore, it’s becoming a way of life to access year-round. And when lockdown happened (and is happening again) the team behind it got active: see a community shop in a pub, new podcasts and daily posters, Some Good Ideas, and a whole array of Good Life Experiences to do at home. At the time of writing, you can participate in the new project Lockdown Radio and an All Day Communion, a partnership with writer Mark Shayler. Out of festival hours, there are also weekend camps at sister project Glen Dye in Scotland and open through all the times their farm shop on Hawarden Estates.
Why we think it’s different: There was a moment not that long ago when making anything other than toast for breakfast was seen as the norm and self-care extended to a long bath. Maybe we learned knitting from our nans, or we tried Jamie Oliver when we needed to cook, or we got into the National Trust to go outdoors. But then something shifted, hugely. With the constant demands of our working and online lives, a planet on a horribly destructive path, and daily life that’s getting harder on our minds and souls, many of us are now seeking out the different and the good and the life-affirming. We’re looking for ways to connect with something slower, more meaningful, and dare we say it more human.
Such pastimes as wild swimming, crafting, and poetry, have become newly popular and widely sought out. Just think about those sourdough starters and new crocheted wall pieces that you started in Lockdown. We turn to other things when the world turns inside out, and often these are simple pleasures, the people around us, and the natural world.
Where once The Good Life Experience was a singular way of being, now more of us are open to experiences that help us find new ways of navigating our lives and having better, more joyful, and sustainable days as we do so. If The Good Life Experience becomes just an interruption in the year from all the things that make modern life what it is than that’s great, but taking new discoveries beyond the weekend has the capacity to help year-round.
In their own words: “At its core, this movement can best be defined, perhaps, as The Search for The Good Life; a life that’s fulfilled and considered, yes, but is also fun and values the things that matter... family, friends, a real connection with The Great Outdoors, proper food and drink, discovery, music that comes from the soul, great books, craft. All the things that don’t cost a great deal but that make life richer, more rewarding, and better fun.”
To find out more: Website / Instagram / Twitter / Facebook
Additionally try: The Big Retreat
