After a hotly-fought contest, the big winners of the 2014 UK Festival Awards have finally been announced. The public voted for their favourite events in a range of categories and the triumphant winners were:
- Best Major Festival (in association with PlugGo) – Glastonbury
- Best Small Festival (in association with Heineken) – The Zoo Project
- Best Dance Event (in association with XL Video) – Creamfields
There was also a prize awarded for the Best Grass Roots Festival, which went to up-and-comer Leopallooza, an event run by four music-loving friends in Cornwall and described as “The Greatest House Party…in a field”.
Winners in other categories
These weren’t the only prizes handed out at the Roundhouse during the ceremony, as a whole heap of other awards in different categories were announced, including:
- Best Metropolitan Festival – Live at Leeds
- Best Medium-Sized Festival – We Are FSTVL
- Best Family Festival – Camp Bestival
- Best Overseas Festival – Tomorrowland in Belgium
- Line-Up of the Year – Festival Number 6
- Headline Performance of the Year – The Libertines at British Summer Time, Hyde Park
- Best Use of New Technology – The Parklife Weekender
- Best New Festival – The Secret Festival
Last but not least was the award for Best Toilets, which was proudly accepted by V Festival. Also honoured at the awards was DJ Rob Da Bank, the founder of 10-year-old event Bestival and the recipient of this year’s Outstanding Contribution to Festivals Award. He had very good things to say about the UK festival scene, remarking in a recent article in The Guardian:
“I really think the UK festival market is the best in the world. Great Britain leads the field in festivals, so to be associated with those guys is amazing. I’m proud that Bestival and Camp Bestival and everything else we do is part of that.”
‘Exceptional’ response from festival fans to this year’s awards
The winners of each category in the awards, which are now in their 11th successful year, were announced at a special ceremony at the Roundhouse in London on 1st December. A massive 720,000 festival fans cast their votes online in the competition to decide the winners, which organisers say is a huge 25% increase compared to the previous year’s response.
The founder and director of the UK Festival Awards, Steve Jenner, said at the event:
“The response to this year’s awards, not only from fans, but also from more festivals applying to take part than ever before, has been exceptional this year – a positive sign that industry confidence, backed by public passion is surging in 2014.”
What’s their secret? Amazing Tents may have something to do with it
At Amazing Tents, we were delighted with the list of big winners at the 2014 UK Festival Awards, as we installed our specialist event tents at not one but all four of the winning festivals in major categories this year, as well as at many of the shortlisted events and previous winners.
At Creamfields, known as the UK’s and perhaps even Europe’s best dance festival, we installed a number of our fantastic SaddleSpan tents. We transformed the hospitality field at the Cheshire event, which was held on Friday 22nd to Sunday 24th August 2014, with our S5000 TriSpan tent, our S5000 Enclosed and our S5000 Concert with its fantastic acoustics. The team were delighted at the results for the event’s VIP guests, and we like to think we played our part in driving Creamfields to victory at the awards this year and perhaps even in 2013 too – when it also scooped the Best Dance Festival Award.
SaddleSpan tents were also spotted at Leopallooza, a small festival in Bude, Cornwall, that Amazing Tents was very proud to support. During the event, which was held on Friday 1st to Sunday 3rd August, we installed a SaddleSpan S5000 Concert tent, a structure that is ideal as a stage cover due to its precision designed shape and compact footprint. Well done to the whole hard-working team at Leopallooza for scooping the Grass Roots Festival Award this year, seeing off stiff competition from Green Man, 2000trees, Y Not Festival and the Eden Festival for the prize.
If you’ve previously attended Glastonbury and The Zoo Project, a unique music event set amongst herds of black rhino, Siberian tigers and African elephants in the grounds of Port Lymphe Wild Animal Park, you may also have spotted our distinctive SaddleSpan structures. Amazing Tents has installed at both the winners of the Major and Small Festival prizes in this year’s awards.
Previous winners and shortlisted runners-up
Amazing Tents has also, quite literally, popped up at previous winning festivals, including the hard-rocking festival Download, which scooped the Best Major Festival prize last year, and Latitude, which was voted to have the Best Line-Up in 2013 with acts including Kraftwerk, Bloc Party, Foals, Hot Chip, Alt-J, James Blake and Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs.
In fact, as one of the most trusted providers of event tents, stage covers and large hospitality marquees in the UK, Amazing Tents has made an appearance at lots of the festivals on the shortlist. These included Larmer Tree Festival, T in the Park, Reading & Leeds Festivals, On Blackheath, Isle of Wight Festival, Global Gathering, Truck Festival, BBC Hyde Park Proms and V Festival. We’ve had loads of experience at a huge range of different festivals, putting up our distinctive event tents come rain or shine (very often rain – it is the UK, after all!)
To the shortlisted festivals who didn’t quite hit the big time this year, better luck in 2015! Make sure to look out for our Amazing SaddleSpans at next summer’s hit festivals…
