Boomtown, the UK’s largest independent festival, has today revealed the next incarnation of the musical and theatrical event; Chapter One: The Gathering. They have announced they are resetting; they are no longer going to release the line up, have changed the layout of the festival and introduced a new story and have reduced ticket prices, all ahead of the 2021 tickets on sale at 7pm this evening.
After embracing the chance to pause and reflect throughout the summer months, when the global pandemic put a halt to all festivals and mass gatherings, Boomtown has announced they are “Resetting from the foundations to allow us to really get things right and to be the forward-thinking, progressive, and inspirational festival community we know we can be. By starting a brand new story with Chapter One: The Gathering, this allows us even more scope to start afresh, with our ethos, creativity and ambition all aligning into one combined vision.”
As a fiercely independent festival, Boomtown is known at times to put its head above the parapet and go against the grain of industry standards, as they did with their outspoken harm reduction campaign in 2017. This time, as part of this newly announced reset, Boomtown has made the bold decision to no longer release the line up ahead of the event, keeping the majority of acts secret until just before the festival.
Commenting on the change in music strategy, the Boomtown team says; “We have spent months debating whether this was the right thing to do but what is clear, is that there are many aspects to the way the music industry runs that don’t work for independent festivals. The complex process of releasing a music line-up with the exclusivity, billing and escalating costs has led us to decide this is the time to rethink the way we approach it and explore new ways of doing things.”
“We have always been a creatively led festival and people attend Boomtown because of the overall experience; we will continue to book incredible headline artists, and all the festival favourites, but by approaching our programming announcements in this radical way, we can create lineups that are even more phenomenal and diverse than we have ever been able to before.” Boomtown Founders
Another change released in today’s announcement is that Boomtown has reimagined the festival layout. “The Main City and its unique worlds will all now be located in what was previously known as ‘Downtown Boomtown’. Every main stage is a brand new concept and nestled deep into magical district surroundings. For the first time ever we will be using every inch of the ‘Downtown’ valley to build up the most detailed festival city we’ve ever dreamt up! Around the city will be the beautiful, forest chillouts and woodland parties we love to escape to.”
You can check out the creative vision for this new layout in the brand new trailer for Chapter One: The Gathering here.
In 2020 for Chapter 12, Boomtown’s last action was to announce a State of Emergency, never imagining what was about to happen globally. Chapter One: The Gathering introduces Boomtown’s new vision of a post pandemic world where the State of Emergency has become a State of Emergence that has risen from the ashes of the old. It is a new world, accompanied by a new story that is waiting to be told that focuses on reflection, acceptance and reconnection. It is a time of celebration, a time to come together, a time of gathering. For more information see our story page here.
Tickets
The final part of the post pandemic reinvention strategy was announced last week when Boomtown released the 2021 ticket prices have been reduced, and all existing ticket holders receive a partial refund. Additionally, the usual Tier system has been replaced with ticketing phases, which means there will be far more of the lower priced tickets available.
“With so many people going through so much right now, we felt it was vital for us to reduce the ticket price to make it easier to attend for all. By reimagining how we run and create Boomtown, we’ve been able to reduce the ticket price, but also enhance the parts that make us a truly unique experience.” Boomtown founders
With over 90% of the 2020 ticket holders choosing to support Boomtown by rolling their 2020 tickets over to 2021, Boomtown now has less than half the ticket allocation remaining. Tickets are expected to fly out of the door, so anyone intrigued to go and discover what the new Boomtown will be like, should jump on the ticket page here for when the 2021 tickets are released this evening (Thursday 1st October) at 7pm.
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