The top two photos are from Y Not Festival 2016. The bottom two are from this past weekend. The ridiculous contrast is of course obvious; but it wasn't just due to the weather. I'm not sure how many of you have heard about the fiasco that the festival turned into this year, but I'm sure you'll get the gist from this post.
I attended Y Not Festival in 2016 and had the most amazing weekend; it was warm, sunny and the event was organised really well and ran smoothly from Friday to Monday. With that experience in mind I saw the brilliant line up for Y Not 2017 and bought a ticket along with a group of 15 friends from sixth form. We arrived on Friday morning in high spirits, despite the weather already looking less than cheerful, pitched our tents and headed into the arenas for a day of music, at which point the rain had begun and the site was already starting to turn into a quagmire. This is most definitely not going to be a complaint about the weather itself - of course you can expect to have to deal with rain and mud at a British music festival. I actually want to address how Y Not Festival dealt with the conditions, and the festival itself (bad weather or not).
1. The organisation regarding campsites was horrendous. Last year, family camping was segregated from all of the main areas, gated, security guarded and only people wearing the 'family camping' wristband were allowed entry. We of course weren't in family camping but I know a family who were, and for them the experience was dreadful. Despite booking family camping, they were just given ordinary wristbands with no additional one for access to the family campsite - this year these didn't exist - it was simply another field, identical to all of the other camp sites, that happened to have a sign post labelled 'family camping'. There was no regulation of who could or couldn't camp within it, and groups of younger festival goers and non-families camped in there regardless, bringing with them noise and behaviour that people with children would want to avoid (hence the whole idea of having a family campsite in the first place). Not only this, the campsite was no longer segregated from the main site, it was in fact the point of entry to the festival from every single car park, meaning that thousands of people were trudging through it causing it to turn into a complete mud bath on day one. It was also a great distance to the arenas, and families with small children had to trek through a good kilometre of difficult conditions and rowdy camping areas to reach the main area.
2. There was no obvious attempt to deal with the difficult conditions underfoot. To be a British festival and not prepare for rain is absolutely laughable. There was no straw or wood chip put down (despite the organisers since claiming they had loads of the stuff) so the ground was left to turn into a complete quagmire. On Saturday night it took us over half an hour to get back from the main arena to our campsite, despite us being camped very close to it, because we simply could not walk through the mud. Obviously it is to be expected that the ground would be muddy and I wouldn't be complaining about it had they made an attempt to make it even slightly easier to walk through, but I didn't see one method of improving ground conditions all weekend.
3. The sheer lack of preparation for the rain. On Friday night we waited (in the pouring rain) for a delayed Clean Bandit to make an appearance, for us to be told 5 minutes before their set that they couldn't get them on, so instead a DJ played the track while their two singers sang along - Clean Bandit themselves did not make an appearance. We then waited (again in the pouring rain) for The Vaccines, only for the organisers to decide at the last minute it was too dangerous for them to play and call off their set. As they were one of my, and many others, main reason for buying a ticket we were extremely angry. Completely soaked to the skin, freezing cold, covered in mud and without having seen any headline bands to show for it, we all went to bed at 10.30pm because we were so completely miserable. Some of our friends who were camping elsewhere drove home for a shower and to replace their ruined tent/footwear/clothes and came back on Saturday morning.
The following day, with a forecast of rain at 10pm, all bands were reshuffled and moved forward - this was poorly communicated via a message on Twitter and the boards by the main stage, and many people missed out on acts like Slaves and Jake Bugg because they couldn't access internet (Peak District = poor signal) or hadn't gone down to the main stage until the act had been due to perform, at which time they had missed them. After brilliant sets by Slaves, Jake Bugg, Example and Stereophonics we ended Saturday on a high, looking forward to Sunday. Unfortunately we woke up to one of our group telling us Sunday was cancelled completely, with Two Door Cinema Club called off (the other band that persuaded me to buy a ticket) along with all of the other Sunday acts. To go to a festival and only see one of three headliners is a disgrace - Y Not were clearly extremely unprepared for the rain and in the end it ruined the weekend (how many times does Leeds or Glastonbury get called off for rain?).
4. The horrendous organisation on Sunday. It took us 2 hours and 15 minutes to leave our car park and get onto the side road that ran around the festival site - and we were on the third row of cars from the exit gate! There were no stewards directing people out, so there were cars everywhere, trying to push into queues and having arguments with other festival-goers. Many were stuck in the mud, and there was nobody visibly there to ask for help from.
Overall my Y Not experience for 2017 was not an enjoyable one. While I would've been more than happy to spend a weekend in the mud and rain had I actually been able to see the bands I'd paid for, the lack of these simply made the whole weekend a disaster. We left on Sunday miserable, covered in mud, and having seen barely any of the acts we'd looked forward to for months. If a refund (even partial) isn't coming to all festival goers soon, I'd like to know why. I definitely won't be buying a ticket next year - see you in 2018 Leeds & V Fest!
Did you attend or hear about Y Not 2017? What are your thoughts?
Maddie x
