Two Heavy Metal Festivals Win Where Many Businesses Fail
An unlikely source brings core values to life.
In August we met up with our friends who live in Spain, and together, the four of us spent two weeks traveling through The UK, Belgium, and The Netherlands. The trip, planned mostly by my husband Zack and our friend Wayne, was bookended by two music festivals.
Two - experimental, heavy metal - music festivals.
I've been to plenty of live shows and festivals over the years, not just in the U.S., but overseas, and I get the routine. Prepping to spend eight hours a day seeing performance after performance. Ear plugs, water bottle, layered clothing, comfortable shoes, charged phone, and some snacks. Check, check, check. What I hadn’t prepped for, though, was having my mind blown with an extraordinary takeaway.
From the moment we reached the first festival, I could feel something was different.
It took hours and repeated days of festival-ing for me to understand these differences. It took weeks of reminiscing, reflecting, and even mind-mapping after I got home for me to fully process, unfurl, and contextualize the entire experience.
Setting the Scene: A Tale of Two Festivals
We started about 16 miles from Bristol, UK at ArcTanGent, a four-day festival held on an operating farm. Nearly 40 bands per day played across five circus tents on a staggered schedule.
The second festival, celebrating Pelagic Records’ 15th anniversary was a week later in Maastricht, The Netherlands. More than 25 bands played over two days in an indoor venue in the middle of town. Bands performed on two stages with alternating schedules, one stage and one band at a time.
Hippotraktor at Pelagic. Video Credit: Jennifer Yates, 2024.
I had plenty of time to study what was happening around me: the technical chops of the bass player, the enthusiasm of the singer, the way a crowd responded to the music, the dynamics between band members, what people were wearing, what people were doing while a band was playing, what the stage equipment looked like, the light show, and festival environment in general.
What I saw
The People: No one individual was out-of-place or stood out as so different from anyone else, because there was such a variety of people.
There were parents with their infants in noise-cancelling headphones, parents with teenage kids, people with friends, people alone, people in skirts, dresses, pants, t-shirts, sweaters, and shorts, people in costumes, people wearing makeup, people not wearing makeup, people speaking English, people not speaking English, people using crutches, wheelchairs, eye patches, canes, and prosthetics, people with different skin tones, people with lots of wrinkles, people with different hair texture, different hair color, people with no hair, people with gray or graying hair, guys with guys, guys with women, women with women, multiple people together-together, people who brought camping chairs, blankets, backpacks, wagons, people who brought nothing, people with tattoos, people with piercings, people with no ink on their skin, and people without pierced bodies. In other words, both festivals had diverse attendees, a slice of the world, all in one place.
Food & Drink: Vegan, alcohol-free, or gluten-free? Covered by every single food/drink seller on-site. And it wasn’t just a lame iceberg salad or a hummus wrap. It was a version of the Thai, Spanish, Mexican, Italian, American, British, Dutch, Jamaican, Moroccan, Middle Eastern, etc. food they sold to everyone else. Even the desserts, like brownies, ice-cream, and waffles, had vegan and gluten-free options. Every coffee booth had alternative milk. The bar had fancy non-alcoholic drinks, like elderberry fizzes. At ArcTanGent, there were potable water faucets everywhere, so people could fill reusable water bottles at-will.
Accessibility: Elevated viewing platforms, ramps, elevators (at Pelagic), and accessible facilities were available at both festivals meaning that people of all physical abilities had equal opportunity to see the bands without worry.
Sustainability: Every bin area was marked with directions on how to separate your trash with the bulk going into a compostables bin. All vendors served their food and drinks in compostable containers with compostable napkins and utensils. The bar at the outdoor festival, avoiding single-use plastic cups, served drinks in “returnables” with bins around the grounds for cup drop-off. At Pelagic, the indoor festival, the bar served drinks in returnable drinkware, too. Having potable water available meant there wasn’t a need to sell water, so there weren’t plastic water bottles littering the space or recycle bins.
Merchandise: Both festivals had the usual festival and band merch for sale, but ArcTanGent had additional vendors - non-profits - selling clothing to benefit at-risk youth and communities. There were tents run by Metal for Good, Radical UK, and Heads Above the Waves. I loved the clothing messages and the purpose behind the non-profits, so I bought two items.
At both festivals, people were polite. They were respectful. They had fun. Despite the crowd sizes, the close proximities, the en masse movements from one stage to another, and the enormous amount of alcohol, there were no altercations of any kind. None. Not at either festival. Not even at the festival that had only vegan food on offer. No meat, lots of alcohol, and no altercations? I wondered out loud if that could ever happen in the U.S.
These festivals were breaking ground, they were innovating in ways I never expected or had seen before at others.
It dawned on me that they had created a culture of appropriate and expected behaviors centered around a set of organizational values. And they did it so well, so thoroughly, that even someone like me, who arrived without reading the “instructions”, was able to feel the full-force of what these festivals stood for.
Heavy Metal Values: Inclusivity, Acceptance, and Sustainability
Inclusivity, Acceptance, and Sustainability?! At a metal festival? At TWO metal festivals even?!
Sporadically, over the course of our vacation, the festivals’ values crept into our group conversations. We mentioned specifics about the people we saw, the food options (three-quarters of us have at least one restriction), sustainability practices, accessibility accommodations, and the non-profit vendors. Even after returning home, we were texting about those values in ongoing conversations. Those values were imprinted. We were impressed. And none of us had seen this level of commitment to core values at any festival before.
The How
At first, I thought I’d be writing to you about Heavy Metal Values, leaving it there, with my observations and impressions. With how blown away I was by the embodiment of these values at two different music festivals. The values story itself is pretty substantial. But something larger was tugging at my brain.
The values aren’t the end of this story. They are the beginning.
The end of the story is the one I couldn’t stop thinking about, weeks after returning home.
The How.
How does a casual observer like me leave two festivals with an overwhelming sense of their prevailing values?
How did they do it? How was it so clear - to me, to all of us?
Next up: A Heavy Metal Approach to Core Values
Thank you so much for being here.
If you’re interested in learning more from me, here are three ways to you can.
Choose your own adventure, because you know I love that!
Thing #1
Liking this content? Don’t stop here. Get smaller, bite-sized bits from Roux, including events, news, tips, and updates.
Thing #2
Work with me! I have an unfair advantage in playfulness and human connection.
That's how I deliver transformational, heavy-lift business initiatives - and their multi-million dollar outcomes - on repeat.
Let me know if I can help.
Thing #3
Listen, subscribe, and review my (related, but unrelated) podcast. Your support means it’ll get more listens and attention from the powers-that-be in the podcast world.