Rise of the micro-festival

With big events like Glastonbury off the menu, summer will be all about tiny, boutique gatherings, says Hattie Garlick

‘It will be beautiful and super-comfortable,” says Charlie Gladstone of Summer Camp, the event he is starting this July. It will take place in the grounds of Hawarden Estate on the Welsh border, where guests can pitch a tent or plump for glamping. There will be wild swimming and workshops on everything from beekeeping to blacksmithing. Gladstone himself is looking forward to “learning to fly fish from a man who’ll DJ with rare French 45s when he’s finished casting”.

The catch? Glastonbury sold 135,000 tickets last year. Gladstone’s other festival, the Good Life, has whittled its numbers down to 1,000. Yet when Summer Camp opens its doors for three weekends in July, it will host

100 guests at once. “We instinctively felt that our guests wanted something smaller, more intimate,” says Gladstone. “Something that allowed them to connect with speakers and performers and fellow guests in ways that they could never do at mega events.”

That appetite isn’t entirely new. Ask anyone who has tried and failed to get tickets for Fforest Gather, two “family friendly gatherings” held at a beautiful farm retreat in Ceredigion, Cardiganshire, every summer, with 300 places at each. By day there are workshops, talks and performances on topics from fish smoking to den building, all conducted by real experts (this year, the Aardman animator Jim Parkyn is teaching model-making). By night, films, storytelling and tastings are held outdoors. “We felt it

was something we would have wanted to do with our own family – something more intimate and nurturing, smaller and safer,” says Sian Tucker, its founder.

The pandemic is likely to leave more families sharing that desire. “The past year has driven an increased appreciation of the great outdoors which, combined with the changing culture of how people want to socialise, creates this great intersection where pop-ups can sit on the fringes of the festival space,” says Joe Elkins, part of the team behind Camp Elwood, which will set up in Norfolk’s Holkham

Estate for the first time this summer. Complete with creative workshops, campfire astrology and canoeing on a mile-long lake, the camp has been designed around Covid precautions. Like Fforest Gather and Summer Camp, the concept is suffused in nostalgia for the great outdoors of a bygone era.

All three look a lot more comfortable than my recollections of campsites or festivals of old. Camp Elwood has a vintage Americana diner and margarita bar. The super-chef Damien Clisby is manning the kitchen at Summer Camp. At Fforest Gather you can stay in a dome with wooden floors and a Japanesestyle bath house. You may never want to queue for a portaloo again.

Small festivals offer a more nurturing and safer environment for children