Previews

At a mere £40 for a weekend ticket, Eastern Haze must surely be one of the best value festivals in the UK this summer. The line-up is dominated by festival stalwarts of a certain 80s and 90s ilk. Hazy Promotions is confident its a different sort of line-up to Latitude and that they can attract around 10,000 people to the event.

Somerleyton Hall

In Search of Space?

Cosmic rock veterans Hawkwind (featuring Ipswich lad Alan Davey) are headlining the main stage on Saturday and they're turning the festival into a family gathering of sorts. Tim Blake, Spacehead, Harvey Bainbridge, Here & Now and Norfolk's Underground Zero are also on the weekend bill and they all have connections to Dave Brock's band.

Senser and Dreadzone are the other main stage headliners, but the organisers say they're promoting local talent as well on the second stage. Llewelyn and aflightoremember both feature on this website's Unsigned pages, while Bejebus and The Future Kings Of England are both based in Suffolk.

There are 5 stages in total - the others covering dance, reggae and Circus Ricardo. There's also a holistic area and the usual trade stands.

Dreadzone

Promoter Seb Fosdal says it'll be a multicultural event, broken down into smaller areas "Somerleyton Hall is such a beautiful setting. Anything we add to it is just going to be fantastic.

"Everyone in the local area is being very supportive and we hope many of them come along. For people who haven't been to a festival before their perception will probably be based on what they see on the telly when something goes wrong at Glastonbury.

"This is a chance for local people to experience all the wonderful things that happen at a festival!"

Circus Ricardo

History

The promoters were hoping to stage Eastern Haze at Great Yarmouth Racecourse, but it didn't happen. The connection to Somerleyton came via the man in charge of the acoustic stage Paul Johnson. 

He'd been to the Hall and knew that Lord Crossley's son Hugh was looking for events to keep Somerleyton ticking over - in much the same way that Hektor Rous is trying to establish Latitude as an annual concern at Henham.

Hazy Promotions have previous experience of putting on free festivals in Norwich's Earlham Park - the Eastern Sun Fair and the Sun In The East event. These guys like their sun motifs - let's hope it keeps the rain away!

Children and volunteers

Volunteer workers can buy a ticket and get their money refunded by working three 4-hour shifts across the weekend (details on the festival website).

Seb Fosdal says it should be an intimate event and family-friendly "This isn't going to be a festival like V or Reading - it'll be much smaller and more children-oriented, hence the circus."

50p from each ticket will be donated to two charities - The Big C Appeal and the Help An East Coast Child Appeal.

Full line-up and ticket details are available on the Eastern Haze website. Use the link on the right hand side of this page >>>