What is the Impact of the Festival Season?

0 Comments | Posted By Corrina Jeffreys

Festivals have become hugely popular in recent times with people all across the world, of different ages and with different music tastes. Today we have festivals for the young, the old, the heavy metal fans and the die-hard ravers. You pay a couple of hundred pounds to pitch a tent in a dirty smelly field and see some of the best live music on offer; there might be a couple of thousand of people dancing away with you or tens of thousands, it might pour down with rain but you’re bound to have fun.

Economically thousands of people are paying a large amount to get to the festival; they then are likely to be charged double what you would on the high street for food and drinks. You’d think those who run festivals were swimming in money but the return can take years, a huge amount of money is spent in organising and putting on such large events; sky high electricity bills and expensive bands need to be paid. A lot of festivals organisers break even; many do it for the sheer experience as opposed to the money. The size of the festival is often an indicator of its financial success; Reading and Leeds are incredibly famous, large festivals and bring with them huge sponsorship deals for those who run them, whereas a small festival such as Glade doesn’t have the financial backing of a large company.

Environmentally a festival causes havoc with the local area; fields are ruined, animals are likely scared away by the noise and the amount of litter is monumental. The time taken for this to recover is significant, especially if a festival returns year after year. A huge amount of power is extended on the festival taking place as well as people getting to and from the venue; more and more festivals are becoming as ‘green’ as possible in a bid not only to save money but to appeal to the doubters and add another selling point to the festival, but it’s a move in the right direction. Glastonbury is famously on hold in order to let the fields recover; a clear sign of environmental damage and how it’s got the better of the festival.

Whether the environmental impacts outweigh the economic advantages is difficult to say but there are significant impacts of putting on a music festival, no matter what size it is. The most important impact, to me, seems to be that the festival goers have fun and enjoy their time there, if negative impacts aren’t permanent and in time can be reversed and avoided then long live the music festival.