18.11.2019

Festivals

The rise of the music festival

While more than a quarter of pubs and clubs have closed during the last decade, the number of musical festivals, many of whose participants see drug-taking as integral to the occasion, has risen rapidly, reportedly exceeding 1,000 in 2016 and still growing¹Bernadette McNulty (2017) Has the UK’s festival scene reached saturation point? Financial Times..

The result is a shift in the festival ecosystem, with a marked rise in the number of city-based and one-day events and a decline in traditional camping weekends.

Whereas, until recently, people living in many parts of England and Wales would have had to plan ahead and travel large distances to attend a festival playing the types of music they liked, now they are spoilt for choice and can often make last-minute decisions based on the latest headlining acts and the weather forecast.

Planning

This provides additional challenges for those planning and regulating festivals who need to be prepared for a last-minute drop or surge in the number of people attending. This has particular consequences when planning to manage drug-related harms; ensuring that there are sufficient numbers of security and welfare/medical staff to meet everyone’s needs on the day or weekend (and sufficient revenue to pay them).

Outdoor festival planners also have to factor in the impact of the weather on their events. There were problems at an outer London Festival in 2019 when a new digital admissions system failed and thousands of festival goers, many of whom had been preloading on alcohol and drugs, were left outside without protection from a very hot sun and started fainting and suffering other adverse effects from dehydration.