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How to Build a Festival

How to Build a Festival
Author: howtobuildafest
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Description
Welcome to our new podcast, where three friends try and figure out what it takes to build a festival from the ground up with no contacts, no experience and no knowledge of how to do it. Join us on our journey as we learn how it’s done, and see if we think we can have a go ourselves. We’ll be talking to a wide range of guests, as well as just chatting about all the things that we love about independent music and festivals ourselves
50 Episodes
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We recap and learn about Rockaway Beach with new guest Ali, and talk about our resolutions for 2025 and what we’re doing with the podcast this year
The gang celebrate the success of the first ever Echo 7 festival, and talk about how it all felt. This one is excitable and we focus on the emotion of it all, the excitement of seeing it all come together after two years of trying to figure out how to do it!
A huge thankyou to everyone who worked with us, helped us in advance and on the day, and who pushed us to see it through!
If you came along - firstly a huge thankyou - secondly please fill in our very quick feedback form so we can learn and improve, which you can find here: https://forms.gle/uEbVsFJJp6qJp5Xw6
We get together for a final preview of Echo 17 before our very first festival on Saturday 20th September! We talk lineup, activities, timings and what we’re excited and worried about! Join us as our journey gets a little closer to reality
Get your tickets at www.echo17.co.uk
Check out our lineup playlist here
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4O3OzxatvJ1qdMaVdEfj0t?si=c8aLp8BTSJ6rEFd4XlX1lw&pi=wKl_FoP7SS6Vd
Echo 17 is finally here on the 20th September and we are joined by brilliant main stage artists Kimmi Watson, founder of She17, and by Muriel and Lucy of More Peas. We talk about their music, their festival memories and the work of She17
It’s End of the Road and that means back to back episodes! We go through our picks for the week, compare them to the famous Sally’s Notes, and chat with End of the Road lineup mainstay Ronan Leonard…. Plus a super exciting announcement
Cat and Rach work through where we’re at with preparations now we’ve launched our website and lineup! We recap a very hot Green Man, one of the best lineups of 2025
Danny Hagan co-founded Green Man Festival in 2003 and 21 years later launched The Wake in 2024. Now coming into its second sold out year, we chat to Danny about the experience both festivals, the difference starting them two decades apart and what made he and his partner Jo come back to start a second festival last year.
Rach and Cat check in with Lakefest Owner Lee Martin ahead of the 2025 edition of the brilliant family festival coming up this weekend.
We talk about the lineup, the frantic nature of the weeks building up to the event and the wonderful ‘Road to Lakefest’ initiative
Our short and sweet announcement episode... The one we’ve been working towards for the last 41 episodes! Announcing our name, date, venues and pricing structure as well as what happens next!
Join us on our journey!
We team up with Lisa and Uncouth Brett to preview this year’s Truck Festival before looking at the 2025 edition of Deer Shed ahead of one of the busiest weekends of the festival summer
Get in touch with any tips for either of these awesome festivals!
We follow up with Damian, Gina and Jack on this year’s Glastonbury festival and talk all about it. Relive the last Glasto for a couple of years here with your favourite OOF mods!
It’s Glastonbury Eve… have you somehow forgotten to do any lineup research, looking for some last minute inspiration, or just stuck in traffic just after Fleet Services on the way to Worthy Farm? Here’s your last minute lineup tips from the HTBAF gang and their friends
Search HTBAF Glastonbury 2025 for our new playlist
Have an amazing Glasto everybody!
Thanks to Tom, Bilal & Leo for joining us!
How do you say OOFestivals, what is it, and how has it grown in a way the team never imagined? We’re joined by three of its moderators to talk through the incredible online community of festival fans and of course to deliver their Glastonbury 2025 preview including lineup favourites, first timer tips and vital information for the OOFestivals meetup
We are joined for the first of two episodes with Jack Leather who talks us through his many involvements in the festival world, including building installations for major festivals, and what is the OOFestivals Discord (more to follow on that!)
We talk to Turncoat Billy’s lead singer Jonny about the local music scene in the area we’re looking to put our festival, the band’s upcoming event, what makes a good experience for a band, and it was like being championed by his local MP for Christmas number 1!
We chat with Brandon from Soaked about the challenges of being independent, and the epic adventures of the band in 2024, major festival bookings for 2025. Amongst our struggles to name our festival, Brandon tells us how he named the band.
After our first visit to Festival Congress, we talk about what we learned as well as gigs we’ve been to and looking forward to in the second half of February
The brilliant lilo’s Helen and Christie kindly spent some time with Rachel and Cat talking about their favourite festival experiences, what makes a great festival to play at, and how to bring gender balance to lineups, including a manifesto for women in music!
lilo have a new album in the spring and a UK headline tour in April - see you there
We run through our favourite music from 2024, our top gigs and what’s going on our playlist at the start of 2025.
Thanks for listening this year, here’s to a great 2025 - we can’t wait to share what we’ve got in store
Cat and Rach are joined by Lee Martin, who talks all about the journey of starting and growing a new festival over the course of over a decade, shares his advice for building our festival, and talks through his newly released book from the incredible story of developing Lakefest
https://lakefest.co.uk/product/festival-of-love-and-pain/