Is it a good idea to take your kids to a music festival?
From the age of 16 through to the end of my twenties, I didn’t go on holidays, I went to music festivals. I enjoyed live music more than beaches or restaurants, or museums, so it seemed the logical choice. Throw friends and beer into the mix, and why would I spend my leisure time doing any thing else?
I went to dance festivals and rock festivals, large festivals and small festivals, UK festivals and overseas festivals. I saw more wonderful bands than I can list, with most of the friends I have ever had. I ate, I drank, I got covered in mud. I generally, if not quite always, had a wonderful time.
As my late 20s came around though, I started to realise there might be other things in life, places I wanted to see that weren’t full of tents & portaloos. I travelled a bit more, and the number of festivals I attended dwindled without disappearing completely. Around that same time I met my wife. She’s even more passionate about music than I am, and we in fact met at a music festival, but we also wanted to explore other places together like, Berlin and Cuba and Heptonstall.
In 2014, we had our first child, in 2017 our second, and throughout those years we were working, studying, buying our first house, our first car and learning to drive. Those years were busy, expensive and sometimes difficult, and we were almost always tired. When we could afford to go on holiday we wanted it to be as easy, as relaxing as possible. The idea of spending a weekend in a tent with a baby and/or toddler just didn’t appeal all that much.
As 2020 came into view though, thoughts of music festivals returned to our brains. We were both turning 40 that year, and thought it might be a good way to celebrate. We booked tickets for Deer Shed, a small, local festival which always has an excellent line up of bands, plus plenty of shows and activities for children. Let 2020 be the year we dip our toes back into the murky pool of music festivals, we thought.
You will, I assume, recall what happened in 2020. Needless to say the festival was postponed, then again in 2021. In 2022 though, we finally made it. I was past 42 instead of 40 and our son who had been 2 when we booked the tickets would be celebrating his 5th birthday over the festival weekend, but we were finally going to make it. Would we actually enjoy it though?
The kids did. They loved the novelty of camping, despite having to share a double air bed, and they loved the sheer quantity of other children there, making new friends and having fun with old (another couple we know well but don’t see very often due to living at the other end of the country had also come along with their kids). They charged around outside playing with balloons and bubbles and bales of hay, and only occasionally getting grumpy or disheartened by the weather.
The festival was a safe and welcoming environment for them, and there were loads of things for kids to do, from films to sports to circus skills to making dens with saws and hammers and pallets of wood (we quickly realised that particular one might not be ideal with an under 5 in tow) Our eldest got the most out of those activities, particularly enjoying the tree climbing, the wrestling, and weirdly the soldering (there was also a science tent). Our youngest was in a slight limbo where he was a bit too big for the activities aimed at under 5s, but not quite big enough to fully enjoy the activities for older kids. I think he generally had a good time though, even if he did complain a bit about all the trekking about the festival site (he should try Glastonbury, Deer Shed is minuscule in comparison, and nowhere was more than about 15 minutes walk from our tent).
As for the music, they were both (unsurprisingly) fairly indifferent. My daughter did unexpectedly enjoy some jazz, but I think they might have been more impressed if Billie Eilish or Daft Punk or Bring Me The Horizon had been on rather than John Grant and Yard Act. They’re Radio 1 rather than 6Music fans at this stage, and musically Deer Shed is very much a festival aimed at 6Music fans. The best we can probably say is that the music didn’t bother them that much one way or the other. They certainly didn’t let it distract them from their main focus of demanding snacks and bubble guns.
So, what about us? There’s the usual caveat that no holiday with your small children is entirely, or indeed at all, relaxing, but in the main we had a good time. I only watched a couple of acts properly (Nadine Shah and Richard Herring, late on the Friday evening after my wife had taken the kids back to our tent), but did get to enjoy chunks of other bands from a distance, with Yard Act, CMAT and Self Esteem being bands I would like to see again.
The most pleasant moments were when we able to sit and enjoy time with each other, and our friends, whilst the children charged about entertaining themselves and each other. This is especially true as we only usually see our friends who were there once or twice a year, for a few hours at a time. Three days together was a really luxury, and it was a shame that the poor weather meant we get sit outside shooting the breeze as much as we would have liked.
So, to answer the question I posed in the title. Is it really a good idea to take your kids to a music festival? I’d say a cautious yes, but it’s certainly not going to be like the festivals of your youth. It’s probably best to think of it more as a camping holiday than a festival. Albeit, a camping holiday at an usually busy and expensive camp site, with Django Django and Dry Cleaning playing instead of some random guy who’s pitched up with an acoustic guitar round the campfire. There were annoyances, there were stressful moments, and like almost any holiday in the UK, there was rain, but the best moments were very fun indeed, and I would be surprised if it were our last festival together.
Originally published at http://colourthecortex.wordpress.com on September 25, 2022.
