T in the Park, is Scotland’s biggest and best music festival. It’s now in its 22nd year and although boasting the new venue of Strathallan Castle, it is fair to say there were more than just a few “teething problems” as put by Geoff Ellis the festival director.
I am no stranger to music festivals but this was my first time attending T in The Park. Situated only 30 Minutes away from it’s previous home in Balado and now on 40-50 Minutes away in Strathallan, it is surprising I have never been before. It became apparent, as soon I was there on the Thursday that the Balado Blues had hit home already. I thought this could have been everyone adjusting to the new environment but it only got worse, By the Saturday night I was hearing chants of “Bring Back Balado” here and there throughout the campsite.
So what was actually wrong with Strathallan? What was so bad that all these faithful T in the Park fans were nearly turning their backs against the festival before it had even finished? Was it just them refusing to get accustomed to the new site or were they just too stubborn to change there ways, too caught up in there memories of Balado, comparing every element to their past? I think that in a way that is true, people do get caught up in their past and their memories can overtake them at times, even if it is subconsciously. But this does not explain that 90% of the people that I spoke too over the weekend have bashed the festival. A week on and the comments and complaints continue online.
The significant and constant thread that can be found in all of the complaints is the organisation of the event. For a festival that brings in over 80,000 people a day, better planning and preparation should have been done, especially for a new more compact site. The poor organisation only became apparent on the Thursday night when trying to make our way into the arena. We spoke to several stewards throughout the campsite and everyone told us something different. After the third attempt we ended up giving up, nobody seemed to know anything and there was little to no signage around the campsites. Not only was the campsite too small but the arena was too. There were several instances when between the Main Stage and King Tuts there was a bottleneck. Most notably before the Libertines on the Saturday night, it took twenty minutes to go only around 50 feet with the rush of people from all directions. This is not the end of the world though; you come to festivals knowing that inevitably it’s going to be like this, I have just never experienced it being this bad before.
The lack of planning on arriving and leaving the festival was the worst of all. Speaking from my own experience, my friends and I left at 12 o’clock on the Sunday night only to be picked up at 3.30am. Compared to some of the other stories this isn’t so bad but at the end of the day it is still ridiculous. The roads were simply not made for that high volume of traffic couple, which with the confusing and little signage on were to go it was a disaster waiting to happen. Things only got worse with the weather, it is Scotland after all. So after a few days of rain the grass turned to mud and cars came to a standstill. Precautions should have been made to prevent this as best they could, or at least a plan should have been in place for this as it was inevitably going to happen. You knew it was bad when at 2.30 the police jumped on their bus and left, it was just the clueless stewards left directing traffic and they all still knew nothing about anything.
I asked a friend what his thoughts were of the weekend, he is an avid TITP Goer and said this – “They have ran a festival for over 20 years a change in venue shouldn’t have caused all those problems. Strathallan was too small for the size of the festival, was poorly organised, they should have foreseen a few of the problems as well. It has to improve if they want people to continue buying tickets, I still had a great weekend though!”
Music is the main reason people go to festivals and I saw some incredible acts over the weekend from Kasabian to Enter Shikari and everything in between. Although there have
fv been a string of complaints, everybody still seemed to have had a good weekend. All the other complaints I have heard floating around are things that happen at every festival and are things people need to start accepting, as that is part of the festival life. I sincerely hope that by next year the creases are ironed out and after the festival, everybody is just talking about the music. Unfortunately, I do not see that happening anytime soon.
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