There once was a time when summer music festivals were wild, creative events populated by colourful, friendly characters who were there to have a good time and make friends.
Sadly, practically every event these days has been turned into a commercial money-spinning exercise, spoiled by corporate branding, and at which festival-goers are made to feel about as special as herded cattle — bossed around between bland stages and ugly campsites by surly security guards, and milked for cash by unscrupulous organisers and traders selling bad food and drinks.
Wilderness is different in every way. This multi-disciplinary spectacular is a festival in the old-fashioned sense: a celebration of music and culture by like-minded souls. And, here’s the important big: it is the crowd who are the stars.
Growing year on year, it is now the county’s biggest festival. But, while capacity reached 30,000 people, it still felt like a bonkers village fete crossed with a crazy fancy dress party and a school sports day for people who refuse to grow up and get boring.
Boasting Metronomy, London Grammar, Jessie Ware and Burt Bacharach, the line-up was reasonable, if not jaw-dropping. But if we wanted big bands we’d rough it at Reading — with all that entails. Many of those there admitted to not having seen a single band — yet all said they’d had the time of their lives. And how could they not?
For a start, the site is beautiful, designed around the rolling lawns, woods, lakes and valleys of Cornbury Park — the last remaining patch of ancient Wychwood Forest. Festival-goers are expected to seek out attractions freely, without being marshalled — whether a high-wire acrobatic display in a forested gorge, a risqué naked show in a big top, a stomping Balkan Gypsy band, or joining some leotard-clad men with unfeasibly large moustaches dancing to the Village People on a haystack.
Highlights were numerous and personal, with no two people having the same festival experience. For me though, the beauty came from mixing with like-minded souls — all of us bubbling with excitement having found yet another delight behind a clump of trees or by a lake. It seems almost pointless to pick out favourites, but they would probably include Metronomy delighting a smiling, though rained-upon, crowd with their bouncy electro-pop on Friday; London chef Russell Norman’s long-table Polpo banquet (we feasted on roast pork courtesy of Cyril the pig); a series of comedy Oxford v Cambridge boat races on the lake, London Grammar’s heart-melting main-stage climax on Sunday; and Tom Middleton’s arms-in-the-air DJ set later that night in the wooded valley.
But the real fun was in wandering around, dressing up, dipping into the lakes for and just joining in with a festival where we were the real stars.
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