Parks and wreck?
Harry Rosehill asks if London’s parks are the best place for music festivals
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My local green space is Finsbury Park – 110 acres of public space, with a collection of amenities that can stand toe-to-toe with any London park. It boasts a bowling green, boating lake, tennis and basketball courts, carefully manicured flowerbeds, multiple playgrounds, a skatepark, outdoor gyms, an American Football field, and much more.
Although these amenities are a world away from what Finsbury Park was able to offer when it first opened in August 1869, they represent a spiritual through line that can be traced right back to the intentions behind the park’s creation. 153 years ago, after years of petitioning from local groups, Finsbury Park was built with the specific purpose of being a recreation space for underprivileged local residents lacking their own gardens.
In 2022, remarkably little has changed. The area’s residents still mostly lack private gardens and Finsbury Park is once again the focus of petitions from local groups trying to protect a public space. As I write this, over 2,000 people have signed a petition called ‘HANDS OFF OUR PARK’. But, whereas those 19th century petitions looked to safeguard the green space from building developments, this campaign has a different gripe: music festivals.
In 2013 Haringey Council introduced a new policy on live music in their green spaces, raising the capacity of events in Finsbury Park to 50,000 and increasing their number and duration. While the park has been home to live music since the 1980s, this signalled a major change in the frequency and size of such events. Then, in the summer of 2014, Wireless, a festival focused mainly on hip-hop, grime and RnB, came to the park. Its three-day run has been an annual fixture ever since (excluding 2020 and 2021, for obvious reasons). In that same time, other huge gigs have also occurred in the park, with live performances from acts like Liam Gallagher, Arctic Monkeys and The Stone Roses.
Haringey Council touts these massive events as unmitigated successes that help fund the park for the rest of the year. However, the Friends of Finsbury Park, a charity that seeks to look after the best interests of the park, vehemently disagrees. The Friends were first formed in 1984, and are bluntly critical of Haringey. Their patron is none other than Jeremy Corbyn (Finsbury Park sits just outside his Islington North constituency) and his endlessly committed nature is matched by the Friends. A petition for the events to be cancelled barely scratches the surface as to what the Friends have done to fight live music in the park. In 2017 they even took the the council to court over the the legality of music festivals in parks; and while they lost the case, certain parameters were placed over future events. For example, profits from large-scale events must now be spent directly on the park.
Clive Carter, Co-Chair of the Friends of Finsbury Park, tells me that “the thinking behind that was that there would be a limit to how many events were sensible to hold”. As Clive sees it, there’s no point generating tens of millions in profits every year when the park won’t cost that much to run. But, as far as Carter and the Friends are concerned, this move hasn’t limited the number of events. Haringey Council keeps the figures of where the profits from festivals go clutched tightly to its chest – and so the Friends’ fight must continue.
Their arguments are multitudinous and nearly all of them are in some way relevant to other parks – both in London and beyond – that host live music.
Exclusive, ear-splitting and unsafe?
The first argument is both the one that’s seen the most press and was the thrust of the aforementioned court case: Privatisation of a normally a public space.
Clive Carter argues that it’s unfair for these events to “deny the best part of the park, the south facing part of the park, at the height of summer to ordinary people”. And it’s definitely true that park users are denied and for quite some time. Even though these events might only be over two weekends, the assembly of the event space and stages, along with the subsequent de-rigging, takes numerous days either side. In the middle of that, there’s four days where there are no events occurring, but it’s neither feasible nor worthwhile for those involved to temporarily take everything down.
Andrew Smith, an academic who has researched festivals in parks extensively, says that “even just the physical presence of those fences has a very damaging effect on people’s perception of the park, because it sends out all the wrong messages about who is welcome, about having to pay, and about the exclusivity of that space.”
Another complaint that always dogs live music is, of course, noise. Or, more specifically, the sound from the events leaking into the nearby streets. I spent a few afternoons this past summer in my flat, with the windows open, trying to figure out what was occurring on the main stage a few hundred metres away. Was Nicki Minaj playing Superbass or Anaconda? Is that The Wombats or Two Door Cinema Club? While the noise didn’t bother me particularly, I admit I might not have been quite so cavalier if I had a wailing baby in my flat.
However, as we’ve already touched on, live music in Finsbury Park is not new. In fact, its presence predates many of the local residents. This case can be compared to the countless number of live music venues recently shuttered due to noise complaints from neighbours. There has been a backlash to those complaints from some, who argue we should effectively disregard noise complaints from residents who move to an area that already has a live music venue in situ. Should that same logic be applied to outdoor music festivals?
Finally, Clive Carter expresses fears over safety for the punters. In 2018, two attendees at Wireless died, one from a drug overdose and another from an asthma attack. Events such as these are not unique to live music held in parks, but there are lingering questions over whether the parks have the infrastructure to cope with the dangerous realities of mass gatherings. There were crowd issues at the Sunday edition of Wireless this year, something everyone in the music industry is sensitive to after the Astroworld Festival crowd crush in 2021 in Houston.
A festival problem or a Wireless problem?
Carter repeatedly makes clear to me that he’s not picking on Wireless in particular, on which he feels the Friends’ position is often “misrepresented”. He just believes the festival should be held elsewhere. Maybe in the nearby, newly-minted Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which is purpose-built for massive events and can host over 60,000 fans.
That he’s so keen to try and stress that his agenda isn’t Wireless-specific is probably because the group has been accused of racism in the past (for instance, when the festival’s 2018 edition had a swearing ban due to the actions of the Friends). But Smith also points out that residents complain just as much about the behaviour of coked-up fans of the Gallagher brothers as they do about young, diverse crowds coming to see hip-hop and grime.
A stadium – of which London has more than enough – sounds like a simple solution, but apart from the fact that parks are probably cheaper to run events in, there’s the punter perspective to think about. The festival experience is intrinsically tied to open spaces rather than stadiums. Perhaps there’s little more reason for this than a perceived vibe, but grassy fields are undeniably linked with music festivals in the collective imagination. The attraction of a city festival in a park is that you get all the green space and street food you’d find at Glastonbury, combined with the convenience of being inside a major urban hub.
The detractors of these festivals focus on what’s lost for the local area when live music events occurs, but there are positives here too. An influx of people generates income for local businesses like pubs and hotels. A comparable event, Parklife Festival in Manchester, brings an estimated £16 million to its local economy.
Beyond the economic impact, there’s also huge cultural capital to live music. The Oscar winner for Best Documentary this year was Summer of Soul, which chronicled the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival – a series of free concerts in a park in Harlem, that featured artists including Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Gladys Knight & the Pips and other legendary names. The film presents the festival as a cultural milestone, so why couldn’t live music in Finsbury Park take on that same role?
This year saw Wireless given greater prominence by the BBC, when it was covered by BBC 1XTRA. While it’s not the same level of coverage that Glastonbury or Reading & Leeds receive, this is a step in the right direction in recognising the cultural value of Black music. But it’s still a long way from the Harlem Cultural Festival, which had no admission cost and no fences. When the NYPD refused to provide security for that event, members of the Black Panther Party stepped up instead. The local community were key to that event’s success, rather than music promoters looking to profit.
While Wireless grabs many of the headlines, Festival Republic holds other events in the park in the weekends before or after Wireless. One such is the curiously named Community – with its lineups dominated by leftovers from the ‘Landfill Indie’ of the noughties. That it has such a moniker is meaningless - surely fans of any genre of music are technically a community? And what about the local community in Finsbury Park? Andrew Smith argues that festivals like Community often exclude local residents due to their high ticket prices and the fact that they purposefully appeal to a national audience. When tickets went on sale for Jamie T in Finsbury Park this summer, Ticketmaster directed users to coach tickets as part of a package deal. Those buses were travelling from as far as Swansea and Norwich.
A movable festival
Money is clearly at the heart of these events for councils, but while green spaces like Finsbury Park, Victoria Park and Gunnersbury Park have come to rely heavily on the funding these festivals provide, there are many parks and councils who’ve steered clear of live music promoters.
Their reasons for doing so are varied. Like the Friends of Finsbury Park, they might feel that live music is not suited to parks. Or perhaps they simply don’t have any parks that could conceivably host a huge event. Or, councils might be avoiding relying on income from live music because it’s just too risky. Andrew Smith points out that these festivals tend to hop from park to park. Wireless itself has now been in Hyde Park, Crystal Palace Park and the Olympic Park (and that’s just the ones within London). Even with long term contracts, there might come a point where a festival moves location, creating a gaping hole in a park’s budget.
One thing that’s clear is that the Friends of Finsbury Park aren’t giving up their opposition. Smith tells me that AEG, who run All Points East in Victoria Park, are historically much better than Festival Republic when it comes to engaging with local residents. However, even if Festival Republic and Haringey made more concessions to the Friends, Carter makes it clear that no suitable compromise would be found. In his words, “We will not shut up”.
Fundamentally, the Friends are opposed to large events, no matter what. It’s the sheer scale of the events that they can’t stand. While they might find the dance music events run by Krankbrother in a different part of the park noisy and objectionable, the Friends aren’t officially opposed to them because they’re limited to around 6,000 people.
When contacting Festival Republic for comment on this article, they directed me towards previous comments from Cllr Julie Davies, Haringey Council’s Cabinet Member for Communities and Civic Life. She said:
“The major events in Finsbury Park bring world-class music and entertainment for Haringey residents and thousands of visitors from across London and beyond.
“We should celebrate the fact we have world class superstars like Cardi B and Nicki Minaj performing in our borough. Finsbury Park has a long history of staging big events and with Covid restricting the lives of our young people for so long, music events like this help bring our communities back together to appreciate arts, culture and music. […]
“Income from major events help to fund improvements to the amenities and facilities in the park, such as our children's play areas and skatepark. These events will clearly benefit our local businesses.”
There is one live music event in Finsbury Park that entirely bucks the capitalistic model we’ve been talking about so far and maybe points the way towards a more equitable future for live events in the park.
In late August, Finsbury Park hosted LatinoLife in the Park. This event is unlike all others in the park, in that it’s free, unfenced and unticketed. Festspace, an organisation that explore how “festivals and events affect the inclusivity of Europe’s urban public spaces,” recently wrote that they were impressed by the extent to which LatinoLife “opened the park up (to new audiences), rather than closing it down” and that the event was “an important reminder about the significance and precarity of London’s Latin communities.”
Free festivals like this used to be much more common in London’s parks, but they have been mostly edged out by ticketed behemoths. It’s a sad fact that LatinoLife in the Park can only exist alongside them because it’s supported by Arts Council England, making it an anomaly, not just in the battleground of Finsbury Park, but in the cultural life of London.
There’s unquestionably a demand for events like this. The 2021 edition of LatinoLife in the Park attracted an audience of roughly 35,000 people. Despite such large crowds, the festival received no ire from the Friends. Instead they said it was “practically a model event”.
Harry Rosehill is a writer based in north London, who's written extensively on the city for Londonist. He's also the writer of Routemasters of the Universe, which is an alternative history of a true London icon (and a perfect stocking filler for any transport nerd). You can follow him on Twitter @huzzzarry.
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