Festivals are increasingly seen as a family holiday and many have kids areas – even nannies. We brave the hot tents and random ravers to see what they’re like
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s a DJ plays MJ Cole’s UK garage classic Crazy Love, adults across London’s Cross the Tracks festival lift up little children in brightly coloured ear-defenders to dance. A smile spreads across my baby son’s face as he bounces his body, finding something that looks like rhythm. Later that day, my daughter snuggles into my chest in her carrier as I dance to songs by Ezra Collective that she has heard in the car many times.
My mum took me to Reading festival when I was 16 and as I’ve grown up there have been new ones to match the seasons of my life. Then came motherhood: last year I became a single parent to a pair of delicious, curious, boisterous twin babies. But I don’t want to stop indulging my inner child alongside my actual children, and I’m determined to keep music festivals in my life.
It’s not just me: Camp Bestival, already firmly family friendly, had an 155% rise in weekend camping tickets for two- to four-year-olds this year. A Ticketmaster study of 2,000 people last month found that 42% of parents see festivals as a genuine alternative to a traditional family holiday, and 73% said festivals were better than other family trips in terms of introducing kids to new cultural experiences. International travel is expensive and daunting, but a festival – while not without its own costs and potential stresses – seems to me to be an enhanced staycation.
