Skyglow Music Festival aka This Ain’t Texas
Skyglow Music Festival, also known as Balloons and Tunes previously, and now more marketed as This Ain’t Texas Festival.
We attended the Driffield event, the second of the organisers planned events for the year. We paid about £15 a ticket which remained the same regardless of whether you purchased the super early bird ticket, the last minute ticket or just a standard ticket.
The event we attended was sold out apparently, and there was a significant amount of people present. The atmosphere was good and the acts, which are all tributes, were not bad.
However there was a couple of issues.
Firstly, the event is marketed as a US themed event, with bbq food and so on. There were plenty of what is now referred to as street food (in other words burger vans which charge double because their food is more ‘street’ than normal) and some gazebo type bars, but certainly no US inspired big BBQ grills etc. and whilst the food was pleasant, it wasn’t earth shatteringly good and certainly not worth the heavily inflated prices charged (£22 a burger, chips extra!)
Likewise the drink was ok, but the majority was cans poured into a plastic glass rather than draught and again, hugely inflated prices (two pints of cider came to over £20).
The biggest issues though were the toilets. Very quickly it was apparent there was not enough. For the men this wasn’t so much of an issue but the women’s queues from the two toilet blocks at either end o the field at one point were almost touching. My wife counted 8 cubicles in total between the two blocks for the women so it was no wonder than many took it upon themselves to enter and use the men’s facilities - something I personally couldn’t care less about however there were some complaints to the security which resulted in some ugly arguments between those desperate to relieve themselves of their recently consumed expensive cider and being prevented.
Now I’m not blaming security for this, they have a job to do and are simply trying to maintain order, however the same security were supposed to be carrying out airport style security checks upon entrance. I didn’t see this happen once. We were neither bag searched or our trolly checked and could have reasonably easily smuggled in anything we wanted. Indeed as the day progressed the ever recognisable smell of a specific herb being smoked started to linger in the air which wasn’t ideal. If security are going to be present, and indeed they should be, then they need to do the job properly at all times, not just when they chose to do so. I would prefer to be delayed entering the event due to effective security checks and searches, than have the toilet policed due to poor organiser planning.
The final issue for us was that camping could have easily been incorporated. The facilities are present (again another toilet block which wasn’t opened!) and there was more than enough room. There were caravans and campers present which I suspect may well have not gone home at the end and this would have made the even far more accessible.
All in all this event shows promise but needs some new event organisers to grip it and do it right, not just chase the £signs for an easy win. If they do fix it, this could continue year on year and grow to be something well worth paying extra to attend and justify the food and drink prices. But at the very least make sure you’ve more toilets!
