A green festival gives aspiring musicians a helping hand by providing a professional platform for them to showcase their skills.

This year Swindon band, The Casual Ties, are on the line-up of Tadstock Festival supporting headliners Brand New Heavies.

The festival runs from Friday, August 25 to Monday, August 28 at Kencot Hill Farm in Lechlade. It is an environmentally friendly, not for profit summer festival, that is run in association with the Transforming Lives Charity and its music project Studio340.

Carmen Hyde from Highworth is lead singer of the Swindon band which perform covers ranging from songs by The Buzzcocks to The Beatles, The Smiths to Bowie. Joining Carmen in the band are Phil Legende on drums, Adam Jones on bass and Paul Bramwell on lead guitar.

Also in the festival line-up are Other Animals, a nine-piece indie orchestra from Melbourne, Australia, who are now based in Berlin, Germany, Troy Ellis and The King Soloman Band from Jamaica, a roots reggae band, now based in South West England, The Verge, Hollow Dreams, Ricky Brown and many more.

The Brand New Heavies are Simon Bartholomew, Andrew Levy and Sulene Fleming. Their name was inspired from a description of James Brown calling him: Minister of New Super Heavy Funk. The band were big on the London club scene at a time when acid jazz was replacing the rare groove sounds.

The band, with N'Dea Davenport as lead singer, hit the big time in the late 1980s/1990s with singles Dream Come True, Never Stop and Stay This Way becoming hits both here and in America. They were firm favourites with MTV and their music was snapped up for the soundtrack to the movie Happy Feet in 2006, and their arrangement of C'est Magnifique was used for the TV advertisement for Lancome.

Tadstock festival began in 2005 and was just for family and friends to enjoy live music, but over the years it has grown, always with the ethos of reducing its carbon footprint by using energy that comes from renewable sources, such as a wood fire pizza parlour, wood fire pits, recycling waste and even a recycled Classic Citroen HY van called Agatha, which is home to a cream tea cafe for the weekend.

There are various food outlets including vegetarian locally sourced dishes from Raw Happy, and heaps of children's activities including the daily bear hunt in the woods, stencil and art workshops and the noisy fun zone. For more details or to buy tickets visit https://tadstock.co.uk/about-tadstock/ - Flicky Harrison