There’s a certain grit required to work festivals. You accept mud, heat, cold, and rain as part of the job description. You carry on when it’s uncomfortable, because you know you’re building something bigger than yourself. The music will play, the crowd will cheer, and for a few hours the world feels lighter.
But there’s a difference between pushing through tough conditions together and being abandoned by those who should be looking out for you.
This past festival was one of the hard ones. Driving rain. Freezing winds. Stages and structures straining under pressure. The kind of weather where every decision has consequences—where a single slip could put someone in hospital. And yet, from the client’s side, there was no consideration. No security. No plan for crew safety. No proper food for young staff working 12+ hours. Just the expectation that the show must go on, no matter the cost.
I’ve been around long enough to know that weather can’t be controlled. But care can. Respect can. Leadership can.
When you see 18-year-olds hauling gear through broken glass in a crowd with no barrier, when you know they haven’t eaten since the night before, when you’re begging for basic safety measures that fall on deaf ears—it doesn’t feel like “the job.” It feels like exploitation.
And that’s the part of the industry we don’t talk about enough. We glamourise the highs: the lights, the cheers, the first chord ringing out across a field. But behind it is a workforce too often treated as disposable. The people who make it happen are not scenery. They are human beings. They deserve to be protected, fed, and respected, especially when conditions test every limit.
This festival left me proud of the crew who held each other up, who worked with dignity when none was afforded to them. But it also left me angry—angry that, in 2025, we are still fighting for the basics of health and safety. Angry that profit can outweigh welfare so blatantly.
Shows are meant to bring people together. They should not break the very people who build them.
“There’s a difference between pushing through tough conditions together—and being abandoned by those who should be looking out for you.”
Some Days Are Darker 
Leave a comment