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Paul Callaby Reviews Mantra 2002You are in: Festival 2002 Directory » Paul Callaby 2002 Review
So came the first weekend in August and show time, we arrived on the Saturday morning having driven down late Friday night. The whole place was buzzing with various traders, artists and entertainers setting up.
This is one show where I can honestly say that there was no way on earth that I could photograph everything that was going on, there was just way to much. People were coming in from the moment the doors opened on both days and there was so much to photograph.
Outside there were chainsaw artists, mini-motorbikes, rodeo bull, Morris dancers with a difference, paintball shooting and a bouncy boxing ring, plus other displays like the funny car guys who came down on the Saturday. In the main entertainment hall there was other entertainment over the weekend, like the fakir show by Al Hakim, which I unfortunately missed, the English stars in their eyes winner, Freddie Mercury. Various bands and stand up shows, the list could go on and on. Just about every part of the venue was busy for most of the weekend. For a first show this was absolutely brilliant, just about everybody I spoke to over the weekend, both hardened convention goers and first timers, thought the same. As with any first show there a couple of things that need to be sorted out for next year but they were not really worth mentioning You are in: Festival 2002 Directory » Paul Callaby 2002 Review
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You know how sometimes you have a gut feeling about something? Well, that was the case with the Mantra convention. The organisers had originally been in touch with me at the latter end of 2001 with their idea of putting on a body art festival that was different from the same old tattoo convention format. In January I went down to have a look at the venue at to say I was impressed was an understatement. Right from then I knew that if what they were planning worked, it would be a special event. At the same time it was a very ambitious thing they were trying to do and if it didn’t work, they were going to be in deep shit. I suppose the main reason I thought the Mantra crew would pull it off was their sheer enthusiasm for what they wanted to do.
The venue that had been chosen to hold this event in was Cheltenham racecourse, not the actual racecourse itself the whole of the hospitality building, which was huge, spanning over 3 floors. It was the sort of place where you could have 2 or 3 thousand people and it still look empty. On the main floor there were the working artists, some traders, the artists trade area (set aside with its own bar and chill out zone), another separate room where the on-stage entertainment was and numerous bars. Downstairs was the market place where most of the trade stalls were, plus a mock up of a 1902 tattoo studio next to a mock up of a modern one. Then on the middle floor was the cafeteria and more bars and chill out areas. On the fourth floor, which was not open to the general public, were the piercing rooms and my photo studio. There were also things going on outside over the course of the weekend.
There were 28 working artists including home and international. Trade stall wise, well there was just about everything body art related you could think of and a lot more besides. There was a really good selection of body jewellery on sale, with Wildcat having a really big stand in the entrance to the main hall from the far end. They didn’t seem to stop; every time I went past they had a queue of people there. There were also a few similar jewellery stalls selling more one-off body jewellery. Body piercing was being done by Mantra2, which is Derek Campbell’s studio. Again they seemed to have a queue of people waiting every time I went past. 
The whole idea of this weekend had been to put on a bodyart festival and this they achieved perfectly; there were street performers and entertainers wandering around the venue all weekend keeping people both amused and entertained. These included the likes of stilt walkers in various costumes, including a Miss Whiplash, magicians, who had people baffled with close up tricks, jugglers, fire eaters, clowns riding around on unicycles, face painters, caricature artists, a vampire acrobat who made more than one person jump over the weekend as he swooped down off his perch onto them. The paint-me man, who wandered around in his underwear and then stopped for people to pain him, and he had no shortage of takers. Then there was a Dell Boy look-a-like (from the British TV comedy series, Only Fools and Horses)who had people in stitches with his antics. This is just some of what was going on inside. 