Festival Season is Here! What Makes a Good Festival?

My summer for the past 7 years have been dedicated to going to outdoor concerts and festivals. It's what I live for. There is nothing better than being out in the sun with a Mr Whippy watching your favourite acts perform live. With Glastonbury just gone and the fact that I attended my first festival of the year yesterday, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about what makes a good festival...and what makes a bad one. I've been to enough now where I feel qualified to talk about this subject. My problems usually lie with the organisation of the festival itself but I'll get to that in a separate post. I'll start with the positives!

What makes a good festival?

So yesterday I went to Amprocks in Bedford. This, for me, was an extremely well organised festival. It was their 10th anniversary hosting the event with Squeeze and The Vamps being the headline acts. Nothing I can really fault (except the chips I got were extremely over cooked but I'll let that slide). Despite the picture above, the festival was packed! (people turned up just as the acts were about to come on. Me on the other hand love getting there as soon as the gates open so I can claim my space). I've been to LOADS of really good festivals so what makes it a good one?:

1) Good Location

This is important and it's quite simple to achieve. Just have it in a big field. Lots of space. Lots of room too dance around and not get in other peoples way. A good location makes or breaks a festival for me. A good example of this is a festival called Fusion. It was originally held in Birmingham and it was fantastic! Amazing line-up. Good family feel to the place and by far my favourite ever festival to go to. It was an annual event and I went every year. Unfortunately, due to complaints to the council, the festival moved to Liverpool and it hasn't been the same since for A LOT of reason. The main reason was the location. Birmingham is in the midlands which means it's easy for people to get to. Liverpool is a bit far out and it added another 2 hours to our journey. The festival itself was technically is in a field...but right next to the docks. What's wrong with that you may ask?...Wind. So. Much. Wind. I spend more time trying to get hair out of my face than I do actually watching the line up. I still sometimes give Fusion the benefit of the doubt and always consider going, but I didn't attend last year and I have no plans of attending this year. So location? Definitely important!

2) Audience Atmosphere

People enjoy live performances in different ways. Some like to sit back, relax and just enjoy watching. Others love to get in to it more and have a dance. Either way is fine by me. As long as you're having a good time, it's going to show. But if the audience isn't getting in to it at all then it can get boring. This has rarely happened to me and if it has, it's usually because the audience isn't really enjoying the act on stage or the event has been disorganised. But atmosphere is key. At the end of the day you have bought a ticket to enjoy yourself and if the atmosphere isn't there then you feel like you've wasted your money. Usually when I go the atmosphere is always on point, especially when the sun comes out! Everybody is in the best mood they can be.

3) Good Variety of Food

Now, I'm a VERY picky eater but I LOVE festival food. It's usually street food and it's usually very bad for you but who really cares about that? But something that I've said at least once every year is that not many festivals sell "snack" foods. What I mean by this is, sometimes you're not in the mood for a greasy burger and chips but there isn't much else to choose from. Sometimes I just want something a little lighter. Like a sandwich. Why doesn't Greggs cater for festivals? I think that would be perfect!

I could go on forever but these are the 3 things that HAS to be perfect for me to be able to enjoy a festival. I just want to add a few honorary mentions:

- Good line-up (but you usually know that before buying the ticket so if you don't like the line-up, why did you go?)

- Good Stalls (face paint, merch stands etc)

- LOUD!

- Good Seating

- Good Toilets (but I don't think I've ever been to a festival that I had toilets that weren't gross!)

I'll be attending a few more festivals during the summer and I'll be talking about what makes a bad festival in my next post. Until then, I'll leave you with some more pictures that were taken at AmpRocks.