They’d been telling us to go to WOMAD for twenty years. They were right.

Friends have been trying to persuade Katie and me to go for the best part of two decades. Every summer there was another excuse - too busy, wrong weekend, maybe next year.

This year we finally went. They were right.

I expected good music, interesting food and a few memorable performances. I didn’t expect to spend three days quietly restoring my faith in people.

It wasn’t the music that got me first, it was the atmosphere. Thousands of people - families, teenagers, older couples, campers, volunteers, musicians - and no edge to any of it. No pushing, no tension. Everyone simply seemed happy, relaxed, present.

Then I noticed something else. Every version of humanity seemed to be there: families with young children, people who looked like they’d been coming since the first WOMAD, goths, hippies, every shade of LGBTQ+, every imaginable style, background and age. Nobody seemed remotely interested in judging anyone else.

It wasn’t diversity as a slogan. It was diversity without commentary - people simply turned up as themselves. It felt surprisingly rare.

The weekend also reunited two families who hadn’t spent proper time together for years. Watching our children, now adults, fall effortlessly back into conversation was a good reminder that some friendships don’t disappear. They just wait for the right moment to carry on where they left off.

A few other things have lodged in my head since.

I’d never heard of Migrateful. Their idea is simple: refugees, asylum seekers and migrants become cookery teachers, sharing the food, traditions and stories of their home countries. Not because it changes anyone’s political views, but because it changes conversations. A meal becomes a story, a story becomes understanding, and suddenly someone isn’t “a migrant” - they’re the person who taught you how to make an incredible meal their family has cooked for generations. The shortest distance between two people is often a shared table.

Then I wandered over to CARE4Basket. At first glance, a stall selling beautifully woven baskets and bags. Then you hear the story. Plastic waste collected in Ghana is transformed into weaving material. Traditional weaving skills are preserved. Local artisans earn a fair income. Waste becomes opportunity.

It’s easy to think of sustainability as carbon targets and net zero. CARE4Basket is about people - it creates livelihoods, preserves skills, restores dignity. The environmental impact follows because someone started by asking a better question.

Then there was Butane Skies. Young musicians, proper guitars, proper drums, proper songs. Maybe I’m showing my age, but they were the real deal - no gimmicks, no backing tracks doing the heavy lifting, just musicians who’d clearly put in the hours. Delighted they’ll be joining The Third Half soon as one of our Music of the Month guests.

Ukrainian artist GANNA was another highlight, making traditional pancakes while singing completely unaccompanied. Sounds almost surreal written down, yet somehow it made perfect sense - food, music, culture, memory, identity, all shared in one performance. At a time when Ukraine continues to fight for its future, it said something about how culture isn’t just preserved in museums. Sometimes it’s passed on through a recipe, a song, and the generosity to share both with strangers.

And something also happened that nobody would have predicted, including me. I found myself in a Northern Soul pop-up - not watching, dancing, for twenty minutes. I’ve never danced Northern Soul before and nobody was mistaking me for an expert. Nobody cared. Nobody was watching or judging. People were simply dancing because dancing made them happy. I walked away grinning like an idiot.

Looking back, that’s probably what connected the whole weekend. Nobody was trying to impress anyone. Migrateful weren’t trying to win an argument. CARE4Basket weren’t simply selling products. Butane Skies weren’t manufacturing an image. GANNA wasn’t simply performing. The Northern Soul dancers weren’t worrying about how they looked. Everyone was simply sharing something they loved.

In a world that often encourages us to judge first and understand later, WOMAD quietly asks us to do the opposite. Be curious. Taste something unfamiliar. Listen to music you’ve never heard before. Talk to someone whose life is completely different from yours. Dance, even if you’re convinced you can’t.

Maybe that’s why it felt so different. Maybe that’s also what The Third Half has always been trying to create - not a place where everyone agrees, but a place where everyone belongs.

After twenty years of saying “maybe next year”, I suspect we’ve just started a new family tradition.