What Green Man 2026 taught me about the importance of serendipity

What's your approach to festivals? Me, I like to spend time compiling a schedule. I'll find the official festival playlist on Spotify, spend several hours weighing up the bands I haven't heard of, then draw up a list of 'maybes', 'must-sees' and 'ride or dies'. Next, I'll consult the lineup on the Clashfinder website, hope my favourites aren't all on at the same time, and plan my weekend out meticulously from dawn till dusk.

How well do I follow that list? Ah, well, that's a different story. It kind of depends on the festival. And at Green Man, a 25,000-capacity event nestled among the Welsh mountains, it's very easy to get distracted.

As I pointed out in my 2026 preview, there's far more here than just music. We're talking comedy, film, science, talks, interviews, workshops, theatre, wandering performers, and more. So while walking from stage to stage isn't difficult physically (everything's nice and close), if you have a short attention span? Well, you might just be snookered.

But for me, that's not a bug; it's a feature. As it turned out, my highlights at this four-day event were less about the main arena and more about the smaller stages, and the spaces between them.

From The Cindys to the Cinedrome

Take The Cindys, a bunch of youngsters I caught entirely by accident. Fronted by Jack Ogborne, with Naima Bock adding thick, jangly guitar and harmonies, they specialise in scratchy, unpretentious indie pop: the kind of thing New Zealand's The Chills or Scotland's Teenage Fanclub were doing in the 1980s. And oh my gosh, they do it well, bashing together simple chords and unguarded melodies into songs that sound like classics the first time you hear them.

The previous evening I'd slipped into the Babbling Tongues tent, purely to take a breather after the raw punk energy of Mannequin Pussy. I found myself watching the most compelling comedy character I've seen in years: a deranged horror novelist called Garth Marenghi who made me laugh so much my jaw hurt. You may already know him from the cult TV show Darkplace, but I had no clue, and I felt like my brain had been put through a blender by the end of the show. In a good way, of course.

A lot of things I saw in the cinema tent (the Cinedrone) were already on my list, from the enjoyable silliness of The Beatles Dub Club to the astonishing Welsh language movie Effi O Blaenau (2026). But I only saw Broken English because the sun was overpowering and the tent provided some much-needed shade.

As a result, I found myself in front of Adrian Utley, aka one half of Portishead, introducing this documentary movie that reconstructs Marianne Faithfull's contradictory career through a fictional framing device: an interrogation by a shadowy "Ministry of Not Forgetting". As far as rockumentaries go, this was the most imaginative I've seen to date. Well worth a watch.

But perhaps my biggest highlight—and no disrespect to Wolf Alice, Horsegirl, Lime Garden, Sprints, Stewart Lee or any of the other stellar acts to grace the main stages—was Joe Broughton's Conservatoire Folk Ensemble in the Chai Wallahs tent. I had to check my glasses when I first saw them: at least 30 (I lost count) musicians and singers, drawn from Birmingham's Royal Conservatoire, playing traditional tunes mixed with everything from EDM to Eastern European and Asian influences.

A band that size, playing music this dense with ideas and improvisation, sounds like chaos. But I couldn't believe it: the band was tight. Yes, 30-plus musicians, all jostling for space on a tiny stage, sounded more together than some three-pieces I've seen. And it wasn't just tight; it was uplifting, moving, emotional… all those things you want in a performance.

Why this taught me

So why does this all matter? Well, just to reiterate: I didn't seek out The Cindys, Garth Marenghi, Broken English or the Conservatoire Folk Ensemble. I didn't even know who they were. But I stumbled into the tent and, crucially, kept my mind open.

None of this was the kind of music, film, comedy or whatever I'd generally seek out. If I'd seen them on the web, I probably would have quickly scrolled on. But I was physically there, they were physically there, and I made the decision to give them a good go.

In our creative lives, that kind of thing typically doesn't happen often. We treat every working hour as something to be planned and optimised. We need to follow the brief, meet the deadline, deliver the deliverable.

But personally, I'm starting to realise that the best ideas I've had as a creative almost never arrive on schedule. They turned up while I was reading something unrelated, or half-listening to a conversation, or, it turns out, wandering into the wrong tent at a festival because the weather was against me.

I'm not saying serendipity is a lifestyle choice. It's never a substitute for hard work, deep study or the practice of craft. But maybe it's an underrated ingredient in our working lives.

So here's my suggestion. Whether you're at a festival, a conference or just out for a walk in the country, it's fine to make a list of what you plan to do. Just don't worry about following it too closely. Leave room to get lost. And you might be surprised by what you find off the beaten track.