Monday, September 09, 2013

Rob Quin: Presenté


Rob and Charity Quinn

Rob Quin: Presenté

“Are you still playing?”
PAUL NORTHUP writes::
That was Rob Quin’s last question to me when I saw him at the private launch of the Greenbelt at 40 film to the festival founders at The Cut arts centre in deepest Suffolk at the end of July this summer. Rob and his wife Charity had joined about 100 folk from Greenbelt’s past – especially the community of artists and thinkers based in and around Framlingham in Suffolk where the whole thing had started – to see the film that told their story.
Rob had been wrestling with chronic ill health for a few years. He was short of breath that night and leaning heavily on his walking sticks. He spoke of wanting to make it to the 40th festival in a month’s time. Charity was going to sing.
But Rob went into hospice care in the days just before the 2013 festival and we heard yesterday that he’d died with Charity and his two children, Jesse and Amber, at his side. Our thoughts and prayers are with them as a family. And with all the wider community of Greenbelt pioneers from that small part of Suffolk where the Greenbelt dream was made reality.
Rob’s question to me that night is one that will live with me always. Why? Well, it’s like this. Rob was the site contractor for pretty much the first 25 years of Greenbelt’s history. He built Greenbelt each summer. He knew how many toilets we’d need. He knew where three-phase power would be needed and how we’d get it there. He plumbed the whole site. Always working in greenfield locations. He gathered a team of the willing for a few weeks each August to build the infrastructure for our festival up out of the ground. And then, after we’d all gone home, he’d take it all back down again. Rob knew things about the way the festival worked no one would ever know.
But, through all that building and grafting, it was what the festival hosted that lit Rob’s candle. He was an artistic soul. He loved music especially. He built what he did because of the space it made for the arts, faith and justice to flourish. When he asked me if I was still playing it was because he always remembered that I had played on the stages he used to build, back in the 1990s. He remembered my name and the band I was in. Seeing innumerable bands over those first 25 years, he still remembered. And I treasure that.
On the Greenbelt at 40 film documentary DVD we released at the festival this year, there’s an ‘extra’ at the end where we chat with Rob in an interview he did for us at the festival in 2012. Although very poorly even back then, you’ll see the twinkle in his eye, his sense of humour, his pride in what he built. Rob was part of the raggle-taggle community of volunteers and contractors who carved out the Greenbelt space in the cultural landscape of this country. Our gratitude and thanks go out to him and his family. We will miss him greatly. Because, although what Greenbelt looks like today is very different in many ways, what we make today is, in many senses, built on the foundations Rob and those Suffolk founders laid for us. Rob will always be with us. 
Always present. Rob Quin: Presenté
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You can read about the 40 Film here and you’ll be able to order it via our website in the next few days.