Steve Muggeridge

Steve is one of the founders and directors of The Green Gathering charity and its trading arm, Optimistic Trout Productions CIC which produces The Green Gathering festival annually in Chepstow, Wales.

The key liaison between the festival’s production team and the charity’s trustees, Steve has been involved with festivals since the early 1980’s - since the days of the Stonehenge Free Festival and the infamous ‘Battle of the Beanfield’. Thereafter, he has been engaged with the transition of some aspects of Free Festival counter-culture into Green movement events, including Maidstone Green Fair and the Green Gatherings. Steve has become something of an authority on festival, traveller and countercultural history, being called on for interviews and most recently to write on ‘Green Festivals and Re-figurative Politics: Communicating Resilience and Hope’ for upcoming book ‘Communicating a World-in- Crisis’ edited by Simon Cottle, Cardiff University. On site at The Green Gathering, Steve heads up the vital Green Control crew, keeping a calm eye on everything that happens across the festival; he also programmes the Voices of Gaia venue, curating a programme of talks and workshops on topics ranging from herbal medicine to folk myths, from megalithic traditions to social anthropology and why festivals matter.