Pre-booking meals: To help us better plan and provide a wonderful eating experience, we are encouraging people to pre-book their meals for the 2025 Camp. You purchase meal credits via the Queer Spirit website and you can then also purchase a physical card or wristband to store and redeem your meal credits. If you purchase a card or wristband, it can be used at all main Queer Spirit events, both the 2025 community camp plus any additional future events such as the 2026 festival. 

Pre-booking will be available during all of July only and to say thank you, we are offering a discount on each item compared to buying direct at the camp, which could save you up to £9.50! 

View menus and booking options... 

Bring your own cutlery and crockery: We are trialing not having any plates, bowls cutlery etc. and instead ask that everyone bring their own. This will significantly reduce waste (no paper plates etc) and also reduce our costs. If you have spare ones to bring that you don't mind sharing with those that were unable to manage this, we would greatly appreciate it.

Other food options: As well as the community café the Bridwell Orangery will be open during the event. Also, Sunbeams Ice Cream van will be on site. Plus, of course, you are more than welcome to self cater, however we do ask you to  make sure you have read, understood and then follow the safety information in the camp terms and conditions.

Please do take a look at the Camp section of the website https://queerspirit.net/camp

To see all information you will need to be logged in first. We have added information about the programme along with some information on the various talking circles that will be happening. Feel free to ask questions, suggest ideas or just soak in the details ready for some great discussions at camp!

A large part of the camp is around talking and sharing circles, so there will be a lot of sitting. Please then do aim to bring something you feel comfortable sitting on, be that a cushion for the ground or a camping chair etc.

The gates will open for the camp at midday on Friday 15th. There will be stewards guiding you to parking spaces and also to offer assistance. Once parked you should head to the booking office caravan to register and to get your wristband. If you have pre-ordered either a card or wristband for food, that will also be given to you.

As well as camping we still have a few places in the stables and glamping if you fancy upgrading your accommodation:

Old Stables

Eight comfortable en-suite rooms with a shared kitchen, available for up to six nights (including pre- and post-camp setup/takedown).
Contribution £300 per person (flat rate, regardless of the number of nights).  Two-person and four-person rooms available – coordinate with friends or let us help match you with another attendee.

Glamping

Glamping structure sleeping 2 people (bell tent) available for hire for the duration of the camp, all fully furnished with 2 frame beds, winter tog duvets, 2 pillows, linen, throws, matting throughout, solar lighting, tables, mirrors, bins and bunting.  Price is £300 per tent.

Community is at the heart of our August camp - deepening, expanding, strengthening our relationships and connections. Finding ways to enable conversations about who we are, who we are becoming, what we need and what we bring as a living constellation of spiritual queer folk.
Of course we’ve been doing this at every QS festival and in between for the last 10 years, growing roots of shared vision, commitment and support. After every festival we receive a rich mix of feedback, positive and negative, which the core team devote many hours to digesting, doing our best to take on board. The vision for the camp is to go further - to put full focus on community building, how the festival and related activities can nurture and support this.

Getting everybody more involved won’t be easy. As any who have tried to live in community will quickly tell you, talking community is one thing, living it is a very different matter. In a mainstream where fragmentation, popularism, polarisation are the norms, it can feel hard to maintain belief in community, especially when being in community is messy, challenging work and there’s no app or AI to do it for us. I believe much turns on how we think of community. The invitation for the camp is to think of community as something we can all do more of, with practice. It's a bit like yoga, little by little, with patience and caring, humour and learning, we’ll find ways to grow our wonderful community. 

Underlying commitment to community of course is another whole set of personal questions and potential challenges. They boil down to two divergent approaches. Do we look for the differences between us and focus all our attention there, risking draining ourselves trying to meet more and more specific needs? Or do we look for the similarities we share and commit our energies to those, where they will bring forth the greatest good for the greatest number?  Mainstream deficit thinking will tell you it’s one or the other. It’s not! My strong feeling is that if we celebrate what we have in common, build from there, then we will bring forth the conditions and the capacity to be able to lean into differences, to better understand them, and be resourceful in meeting particular needs with compassion and creativity. How do we do all of this - put full focus on community building? I believe by devoting more time to enquiring into ourselves as a community, finding more ways, formal and informal, to be in dialogue with each other about the themes that matter. Which brings me to Talking Circles.

Talking Circles on a host of important topics are happening throughout the weekend of our camp. They are open to all, and all of us would love as many as feel called to participate. There will be facilitators to hold space, timekeep, and ensure equality of voices and focus. There will be a recorder taking summary written notes of topics, concerns and suggested actions. They will not record people’s names nor try to capture everything said.

The Talking Circles are the beginning of a community-wide dialogue and it’s hoped many informal conversations will bubble up after the circles. As soon as possible, the summary notes will be available in the Village Hall for anyone to read there and add further comments. All this material will be shared on the community section of the website so that everyone who wishes to can contribute and carry ideas forward following the camp. Qweaver, for the core team.

Our 10 talking circles

Care, Welfare and Healing

From mutual aid networks to chosen families, the queer community has a long history of creating systems of caring and support. We’ve carried each other through grief, discrimination, joy and recovery. We know that healing is not only personal, it’s also political, collective, and ongoing. Among other topics this talking circle looks at what caring and healing look like, how we build structures that hold and protect us all, and how we can reimagine healing both as a goal and as a shared and sustaining practice.

Children and Young People

Calling parents, parents-to-be, and anyone who believes that Queer Spirit has more to offer for children and young people. We need help to make QS an inclusive, exciting and safer place for kids, teenagers and guardians. Help us to envision projects like a self-guided play area, with volunteers on hand, and a tent for all-ages workshops and activities. As we don’t have the resources to meet all possible legal requirements we need to think about how we replace traditional childcare, but we know we can thrive on input from our community about how to make this space very special. Come and join us!

Community Building

Queer Spirit has always been more than a festival – it’s a community, a movement celebrating, resourcing and manifesting queer spirituality. The festival is what it is because of the kinship of volunteers who create it and those who come to it. This circle asks what other elements of community are important to us, and how we enable them alongside the festival? These elements include developmental group activities, networking, skills-sharing, creative collaborations, support, activism, online resources, and relationships with allied organisations and festivals.

Global Majority

Black, Indigenous and People of Colour are an integral part of the fabric of each of our communities and that of Queer Spirit. Historically overlooked, misunderstood and under-represented, this talking circle is an opportunity to centre the perspectives, wisdom and future visions of the global majority. We will be building on foundations for a queer spirit that can hold people's diverse cultures, heritages, histories, experiences, ancestry and identities.

History, Aims and Ethos

Queer Spirit was created to be a space for celebrating the diversity, creativity, intersectionality and spirituality of all LGBTQIA+ people, and respect is at the core of our QS ethos. The first QS Festival in 2016 grew from roots connecting back to decades of ecological, political and spiritual activism. In this circle the founders of QS will tell the story of the birth of the festival, its nine-year journey, and the aims and the ethos that guides the team producing it. Then we invite your comments and questions, suggestions and observations. How will the aims and ethos of the festival evolve in its second decade?

Inclusion and Access

Inclusion is a vital part of the Queer Spirit ethos, which at its most basic means including everybody. But including everybody can be harder than we might think. It can mean we need to look at our unconscious biases, and challenge the ways we have been taught things should work. It means listening to people when they tell us what they need, and inviting them to be part of finding flexible solutions when it seems that needs may conflict with each other. This circle will look at what have we done well in the past, and what needs improving in the future.

Performance

Over the last ten years performance at Queer Spirit Festival has blossomed and bloomed into the huge and diverse programme we now host, which spans multiple spaces and genres. This circle is an open invitation to all to help shape how we can sustainably hold, encourage and support the creativity of our performers in the future. What do audiences want to see on our stages? How can we continue to encourage new expression and creative experimentation in a safe and supportive environment? What can we do to expand beyond the festival and encourage connection with queerness and spirituality through the arts and performance?

QS Future Visions

From four hundred attendees at Thoulstone Park in 2016, Queer Spirit had almost doubled in size by the fifth festival at Bridwell Park in 2024, an incredible site where there's room for the festival to continue to grow. How will that look in future years? What does the future hold? How do you see the festival developing? Is there something you would like to contribute? As we set out together to co-create the second decade of QS, here is your chance to share dreams and visions, and to acknowledge concerns and fears.

Risk and Safety

We come to Queer Spirit for sharing and exploration, finding out about ourselves, who we are and what we might be. Throwing ourselves into the experience can be freeing, but also scary, so it’s important to know where our boundaries are, what we dare to risk and what doesn’t feel safe. This circle explores how we can encourage the exploration of risk-taking and the provision of appropriate safety measures at Queer Spirit. It looks at issues around boundaries, consent, vulnerability and support, so that each of us can get as much as possible of what we need and desire from future gatherings.

Temple

This circle is an opportunity to bring feedback and ideas for the future of the Sacred Sexuality Temple at Queer Spirit. We invite those who have facilitated or held space, have stewarded or acted as PriestX, and have participated, prayed, played and connected in the space, to help co-create a collaboratively-imagined evolution of sacred sexuality as it is held and delivered at QS. We are interested in input from those who have experienced temple spaces at other events focused on sacred sexuality, particularly the experience of AFAB people, minoritised genders and the global majority. Bring your offerings of imagination and positive growth to this sacred community sharing.

Please find some useful and important information below that is presented to assist in making Queer Spirit Community camp a safe, welcoming and fun space for all. We appreciate there are a lot of words here, but feel sure you will get the most out of the event if you can take a few minutes to read everything. 

Venue: Bridwell Park

Arrival - Gates will open to the public from midday on Friday 15^th August.

The entrance to the event is from the east gate and you will be guided to the parking areas by our stewards. Please be aware that there will be pedestrians and possibly deer wandering around the site including the roads, so please drive slowly, thank you.

Once parked, please head to the 'Office' where we will issue you your pass (ticket) to check you in and issue you with your wristband. You can print out your e-ticket before arriving, or show it on a mobile device. If you can not manage this we should be able to find you on our list if you let us know your ticket number/ref and your registered name, however we may ask you to show some form of picture ID for this. 

If you have pre-ordered food we will also let you have your 'hardware' (tickets, card or wristband) when you check in at the office.

Please be aware that no vehicles will be allowed past the car parks onto the main event site unless we have authorised your vehicle for access needs (you must inform us in advance), Camping is not allowed in the car park.

Further travel information can be found here https://queerspirit.net/location

If you have access needs, stewards and welfare will be on hand to assist you. 

Departure -  All participants MUST have left the site by 2pm on Monday 18^th August at the latest.

If you haven’t already, please do read through the camp terms and conditions. There is also a PDF copy available.

Camping - The site has fewer camping areas than the festival as we are much smaller in numbers:

• General camping. Please, for safety's sake, camp away from the trees due to risk of falling branches etc. 
• Accessible camping - Close to the main road and will have welfare people on hand to offer any assistance you may require. 
• Live-ins - General live in area plus accessible live-in area
• Glamping - If you have booked glamping, please let the stewards or office know when you arrive and they can make sure you get checked in to that.

Young People - Young people are the responsibility of their parents at all times. Our under 18’s wristbands have a space for a contact phone number on and we kindly ask you to write one on there as part of the arrival check-in.

Access needs - If you have any access needs in terms of setting up your tent, moving about the site etc, please do get in touch with us as soon as you can before the camp, so we can work with you to find ways to assist.

Parkland Deer - the venue has a herd of parkland deer which roam freely all year round within designated areas of the Park. To protect them please clear up all rubbish from the ground and if bringing a dog it is part of the terms of the camp that you must keep dogs on leads at all times in all areas of the event.

The deer must never be approached by any persons coming to the camp for any event whatsoever. Whilst the Deer are a very beautiful and prominent feature of the venues landscape, they should always be considered a wild and dangerous species who would not hesitate to act vigorously and aggressively to protect their calves or themselves. If provoked, a Deer could seriously harm if not kill a dog, another animal or human being.

Health and well-being - please do be aware that we ask everyone to be responsible for their own well being at the camp. If you have an ongoing medical condition please inform the welfare team in advance and if possible carry evidence with you. We have a welfare team just in case things get a bit much for you but prevention is better than cure often.

As a responsible adult we do also encourage you to be aware of safer sex practices and although we will endeavour to have safer sex supplies on site, please do consider bringing your own - after all, you know what you like best.
See our covid & health policy

Medications - please do bring any prescription medications you may need. If you need any special storage (such as a fridge) please do contact us before the event to chat about this.

Nudity - People sometimes have different definitions of nudity, for Queer Spirit we are defining it as full or below the waist nudity of any body.
Queer Spirit is very much a community that encourages people to express their true self and for some people, they may choose to express that through nudity.  We welcome 'respectful' nudity in the main Queer Spirit evet area. We also respect the venues request that nudity is kept out of the the rest of the grounds owned by Bridwell Park, such as the Orangery Café etc.

When we talk about respectful nudity, we ask that people be sensitive to the reactions of young people or those not used to clothing optional spaces. There are many nuances around 'nudity' and we understand people can feel unsafe around nudity even when there is no overtly sexual behaviour, contact, or even proximity, for a variety of understandable and valid reasons. We encourage people to talk to a steward, the info point, or the welfare team about any issues they may have.

We reserve the right to ask anyone, at any time to either put on clothes or exit a space or area. If someone’s state of nudity is regarded as sexually inappropriate, we will ask them to cover themselves and if this request is not followed, the person will be asked to leave the site.

Market Day.  Saturday 10am - 4pm.  Camp attendees are welcome to fly pitch, offering their crafts/tarot readings/etc. We ask simply that you donate 10% of your takings to the Queer Spirit funds.

Camping tips - for those who feel the cold more, putting a hot water bottle in your sleeping bag before you go out for the evening means you can come home to a cosy bed. Although we will have lighting on site, a torch is always handy to have with you especially if you remember to carry it with you before it gets dark!
A good concept at camping events is not to bring anything you don’t mind losing - the site is a big field where things can get lost and your home is often just made out of canvas with minimal security. Although we will have a lost & found space at the event, we are not liable for anything you may lose. You may wish to think about registering items (for free) at https://www.immobilise.com

Safety - Please make sure there is plenty of space between tents to minimise the risk of fire, our stewards will be on hand if you are not sure about positioning etc. Please do not have candles, t-lights, barbecues or other types of fires/flames inside tents.

Gas camping appliances may only be used according to safety instructions and in the open air, or in properly fitted campervan/caravan (gas cookers and barbecues can emit carbon monoxide - you cannot see or smell it but it is a deadly gas and so you need to be using in conjunction with a correctly fitted chimney.)

Main pathways will be well lit but please bring a torch with you. Keep pathways/fire lanes free of tents and guy ropes.

Please pay attention to any health and safety information given, for example at the sauna. Please wash hands before touching food and use hand-wash provided at toilets. Extra care around hygiene can ensure that diseases are not passed around. Please be aware of fire safety and supervise young people around fires.

Pre-event connections - Our online community is a great place for you to post for travel shares, ask questions and connect with others. 

Respect and Consent - we are working to make Queer Spirit Community camp as safe a place as we possibly can. As lgbtqi+ people, we are often reminded how unsafe the world can be for us, and our community has, in part, been created out of the need for spaces free from homophobic and transphobic abuse. Issues of consent are incredibly important, when we dance, when we meet people for the first time and offer a hug (there are many people who don’t wish to receive hugs), when we admire others outfit or hairstyle, and when we say goodnight. It can also be relevant in our conversations with others, when we may wish to ask personal questions or open up a conversation about an emotive topic. When you are unfamiliar with a person’s boundaries it is essential to ask. More on this on the website 'Queer Spirit Ethos' 

Village hall - We have this message from our village hall team: "Calling all queerspirits with transport, please consider bringing rugs, cushions, blankets etc to add extra cosiness to our Village Hall. The Village Hall is new this year and offers an always-open, covered place to relax, chat, stay informed, drag up, co-create and take in scheduled stage performances. Please help us by bringing anything you can to make it special and inviting. Please keep a photo or list of your items so you can retrieve them at the end of the event. Thanks lovelies and see you very soon!

Please note that we will not have the usual 'drag bag' so please do bring your own drag/dressing up/down gear!

Although we will take every care to look after your things, we ask you to understand that all items left with Queer Spirit are left at your own risk and Queer Spirit won't be able to reimburse you for any loss or damage." 

Queer Spirit is a non-profit community event, run by volunteers.
Please help us spread the word by inviting your friends!