News Why Does It Always Rain On Me: Are Weatherproof Festivals The Way Forward?

Year in and year out, festival season is plagued with the erratic temperament of British weather. Sometimes there’s a heat wave, sometimes festival-goers have to navigate mud baths just to see their favourite bands, but isn’t that the unpredictable beauty of summer?

Well, no. No it’s not. It’s a complete pain in the backside to prepare for a weekend of sun to be met with welly and waterproof suitable weather, or vice versa.

Hevy Festival is planning to combat this by hosting their entire festival in a waterproof haven, or as they put it ‘better looking, better sounding, weatherproof stages’. But is that really necessary?

As someone who has survived my fair share of mud at festivals this year - thank you T in the Park and Download for testing the resilience of my wellies - I can see the positives and negatives. Example: walking from the Pepsi Max stage after Corey Taylor to see Killswitch Engage at Download Festival was like climbing a slightly muddy and slightly over-exaggerated Everest, because as well as dodging thousands of people, my shoes accumulated hefty amounts of mud with every drawn out step.

The idea of this journey being covered by a roof, therefore far drier, is just a gleeful thought. But, this leads me onto the swamp in the King Tut’s tent during Skrillex at this year’s T in the Park. People have been walking in and out of the tent all day, the ground is sullied and water has been seeping in, despite there being not much rain (I don’t know how that works either). As we walk in after a day of navigating more horrendous mud, the back quarter of the tent is a pool. Some brave souls walk through it only to discover it swamps up to three-quarters of their wellies. Slip in that and you’ll look like Morph.

The mud is horrible, the looming clouds that signal potential rainfall means it could end up even worse, and the idea of being indoors and safe from even the UK’s greatest weather curveballs seems amazing. But here’s a little secret: when you’re watching the band you’ve been dying to see - you really don’t care about the weather.

I stood in torrential rain, wearing a poncho and looking like a bit of an idiot to see Aerosmith a couple of years back. I was grumpy, I was muddy and I was soaked, but the moment the band strutted on stage all was forgotten. The atmosphere is completely different between indoors and outdoors and the weather is just an added factor. The constant threat of slipping on your backside in mud isn’t great, but there’s just something different about being in the outdoors with others to see these bands.

Plus, festivals are a place of fun. Sure, you can wear costumes indoors, but what about the mud enthusiasts? Isn’t there a certain joy to be had in watching someone go ‘Olympic mud diving’ as you walk between bands? Or seeing people covered in mud hug their fellow, yet notably cleaner festival-goers? Or festival mud wrestling? Or the good ol’ fashioned mud sliding?

Hevy Fest may be lacking some mud-related events, but they’ve taken away what can often be a downer on festivals. Should the weather prove to be its usual self i.e. a complete and utter nuisance, then this seems a good move, but nature could throw its biggest curveball yet: sun. Would you rather be indoors for glorious sun?

Either way, people will be able to see their favourite bands in a relatively dry setting and that’s great thing, especially during festival season. It’ll likely have a different atmosphere to past years, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be a bad change and it’ll probably lead to changes in future for certain outdoor events. It’s hard to see this being put into practice for large scale festivals, but Hevy have managed to do the impossible and subvert British weather.

At least Reading and Leeds will still be available for mud-related sports this summer.