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Yestival 2025 - A Summary

July 15, 2025

Another Yestival has been and gone and the wind hasn’t yet left our sails. We also haven’t stopped desiring random naps! This was the 9th Yestival (somehow we thought it was the 8th all weekend) and it was a celebration of the YesTribe’s 10th birthday, and this year’s Camp Yestival felt a tad special for so many reasons, which always start with you - you who bought a ticket and still brought a generous smile and a weekend’s worth of applause and support.

Thanks to everyone who helped raise over £1000 for Parkinson’s UK (through the bake sale and other donations). Mmm, cake! And if you’d like to become the latest YesTriber to fundraise for Parkinson’s UK we’d love to share your challenge and add it to our growing list of Parkinson’s supporters.

As you know, this has become an intensely personal challenge at home for us, and your kindness is so much more than charity. We really appreciate your moral support and anyone who has donated some time to come and help us at Big Sky on a workaway.

Finally, if you know anyone with Parkinson’s who might like to attend our Parkinson’s UK-supported Parky in the Park Festival in 2026, please let them know! More details coming soon on www.bigskyhideaway.com :)

Upcoming Events

Wilderness First Aid Retreat: 4-5 August 2025 - a two day first aid course for beginners or a refresher

Let’s Begin with Dave C and Krish Patel: 8-11 September 2025 - start something new!

Big Sky HangOut: 12-14 September 2025 - a chilled weekend full of hammocks!

Mississippi River Trip: 19-26 October 2025 - the trip of a lifetime in a unique environment

YesTribe Spring campout: 10-12 April 2026 - start the camping season in 2026 in style.

And there are so many events going on in regional YesTribes, head to Facebook and add your region after The YesTribe in the search bar (eg: The YesTribe East Midlands). Here’s a regional summary, although some regions are currently lacking volunteer leaders

And finally - put the date in your diary for Yestival 2026: 12-14 June 2026. Tickets will go on sale in mid November.

Other notable mentions

Throughout the weekend so many opportunities, adventures, books and events were mentioned and below we’ve tried to collate a list of them (if any have been missed let us know and we’ll edit this page)

Your Kindness of Strangers donations meant four people came to Yestival who ordinarily wouldn’t have been able to. THANK YOU!
Tom Napper’s fine designs made this year’s mugs and merch extra special (PS. Tom is a jobbing artist and is always on the lookout for commissions and opportunities in case you find the need for such a talent). He also made this compilation of your lovely self portraits!
Tegan Philips was mentioned on the weekend as a supremely talented and funny human to follow, she’s awesome!
Lana mentioned “The Baton of Hope” tour as something to follow later this year
Guy Baker mentioned this in an open mic, you can nominate yourself or someone else for this expenses-paid adventure in Colombia from 22-29 November

And a big thank you to those of you who extended Yestival by an extra day to help us put chairs away, sort bins out and take big tents down.

Our Speakers

These incredible humans all donated their time and stories to make Yestival 2025 the weekend it was. Please give them a follow and a cheer and if you ever need a speaker/workshop leader at an event, please do think of them! In no particular order they are…

Request for film

We’d love to see any film of your Yestival journey (before and during the event) so we can edit together a lasting memory of the weekend. If the YesTribe stands for anything, it’s community and collaboration, so hopefully you can send us your gems to edit together :)

WeTransfer is a free website where you can send footage and photos (to dave@sayyesmore.com) if you find the time to share. Thank you!

Big Sky!

If you enjoyed your time at Big Sky please do spread the word. We’re open 1st April until 1st October each year, we hire the site out in part or full for events throughout the year, and in between we’re open for camping and glamping. We’d really appreciate it if you spread the word and come back to see us, and for added incentive use the code “YESTIVAL20” to get 20% off stays of two nights or longer for the rest of this year.

Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube

Finally, a huge thank you to the volunteer crew, our inspiring speakers and everyone who brought their own magic to Yestival. And of course to Anna Pumer whose photography has brought Yestival to life over the past few years. What better place to finish this blog than to share her official photos from Yestival 2025. Yay!

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Yestival 2018: Four Weeks On

November 18, 2018

Dave Cornthwaite looks back at Yestival 2018

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Why Yestival Matters

October 15, 2018

“We grew out of a tiny little idea to go camping with strangers, and since have made a difference to thousands of lives around the world. Yestival is a celebration of this idea that we can all have a positive impact”

As with everything in the early stages of the YesTribe, Yestival wasn’t so much an accident as a passing thought which stuck, then became reality, and ultimately turned into a ritual.

At the end of this week the fourth Yestival will open its gates, and if you’re one of those beautiful souls wandering up the wooded track towards our Field of Dreams in West Sussex, please know that you being there really means the world to us.

We’re not a professional festival-creating company, we don’t do this for profit or pay. Instead, the very reason that a handful of new friends created the first Yestival in October 2015 is exactly the same one that drives this weekend’s gathering. We find ourselves as part of a community of people who don’t let inexperience or doubt get in the way of doing something that matters.

“Shall we run a festival?”

“Yes.”

It was that simple. Well, until the planning started!

But club together the varied experiences of strangers-now-friends and sure enough, less than two months later the first humans were taking a walk towards our newly built field of tents. A big SAYYESMORE sign overlooked the grounds, warm messages greeted all-comers and I remember running up and down the track just hugging people and saying thank you. “From the bottom of MY heart, thank you.”

When a choice is made by someone else to support something you conjured up from nothing, well, validation should never be underrated.

From festivals to nights of adventure, hundreds of campouts and overseas trips and coffee mornings and giving a double decker bus a brand new life in the countryside, these creations are the result of us leaping onto the inklings of interest from anyone who once came camping and then uttered the immortal (and sometimes regrettable) words, “is there anything I can do to help?”

Of course, the answer was always a resounding “yes!”

It’s not easy running an accidental non profit. I set out to get more folks outside and to turn my social media ‘friends’ into real humans. I didn’t envisage leading a team or dealing with the endless turnover of volunteers or end of year tax returns or especially the occasional trolling that comes with having an online presence.

I’d just imagined the benefits of bringing people together in the great outdoors and even the concept of a bus in the countryside, but what lies behind these efforts was a footnote. And I’m quite shortsighted so footnotes have never attracted my attention. Yes people decide where to go and that decision includes the leaping (or slow, painful crawling over) of all obstacles en route.

Yestival is a celebration of another year passed, of hundreds of adventures and projects and good things done. Of the power of community and the results of an organisation that relies on non-transactional kindness.

And more importantly, Yestival is the way SayYesMore survives. It costs a ridiculous amount of money to put tents up in a field, order in caterers and benches and firewood and stages and lights and sound equipment and gear for the crew. Drinks and insurance forms and permissions and fire extinguishers and toilets! Don’t forget the toilets...

We made a loss for the first two years and now we’re still just inching over the finish line. But we always hoped that the months it takes to make Yestival happen would ultimately mean we could cover our costs for the year and that hope rests entirely on two things happening:

The scrimping and saving on materials coupled with the generosity of our speakers and staff.
And the fact that people decide to come.

Tommy Scargill begins a big old journey at Yestival 2015

Helen Proudfoot continues the tradition, cycling out in 2016

And that is pretty special. That people decide to come to Yestival makes all of this worthwhile. We can create the most incredible setting, but if nobody is there it’s worthless. That final outcome is totally out of our hands. It’s up to you.

And here’s why I want to let you know that you matter.

You walking down that track is worth moderating tens of thousands of social media posts a year. Those smiles at the entrance gate and the selfies by the big sign, it’s worth the sleepless nights and the stress and the worry of committing to a big, expensive event. The cheers and laughter and applause in the main tent on Friday night is worth death by spreadsheets (oh my, the spreadsheets!). The thank you hugs all weekend: worth it. The social media posts afterwards: worth it. The “I’ll never forget this weekend” whispered in the ear before you walk back down the track, into the world you came from: worth it. When you spend an extra £10 to buy a Kindness of Stranger ticket for someone who you may not meet - you make OUR day.

So when you’re on the approach to Yestival, clear your head and take a moment. You’re not just someone who purchased a ticket to any old event. You’re not just a number to us, you’re a name and a soul. Hugging numbers is no fun at all.

You coming to Yestival makes our thousands of donated hours worthwhile.

The murmur of anticipation before each talk, it’s glorious.

Those little messages we find written on the SayYesMore sign as we limb-wearingly store everything away before the sun drops on the Sunday after it all happened; bloody hell they’re special.

The sound of your wellied footsteps walking down that track makes my heart pound with gratitude. Because of you, all the effort that the SayYesMore team put in is worthwhile.

And if there’s anything any of us should require from our time, our efforts, our hopes and our decisions: it is for these things to be worthwhile.

And my promise to you, seeing as you’re making the effort to come along, is that we have done everything we can to make your Yestival journey worthwhile. We can’t wait to see what you do next.

With love,

Dave

If you haven’t already, join the YesTribe on Facebook, it’s free!

And do consider the YesBus as a venue for your next work event, or simply a weekend of country time in 2019.

Finally get involved on your social media channel of choice:

The SayYesMore Website | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

The YesBus | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

Say yes more , make life memorable