Winzum at Boomtown: New Beginnings & Endless Creativity

Music

Fresh from our adventure at the return of Glastonbury in June, Winzum was lucky enough to attend the post-Covid comeback of the Boomtown Fair recently. A lot has changed for arguably the UK’s most immersive festival. 2020 should have seen Boomtown’s biggest iteration yet, but the team went back to the drawing board after two Covid-related cancellations over the last three years.

It was a golden opportunity to reset the script and imagine a new world for revellers to enjoy, informed by the power of community and a deep commitment to our natural world. And so Chapter One was born, and with it, a profound change of the Boomtown Fair layout, concentrating its many districts into the Matterley Bowl formerly occupied by the iconic Lion’s Den stage.

The lineup was released less than a week before Boomtown began on the 10th of August, with a real focus on the music as a whole rather than a handful of big-name headliners. Punters enjoyed the creme-de-la-creme of underground dance music alongside reggae, ska, afrobeat, punk, and folk.

The Boomtown Fair ethos resonates deeply with our own at Winzum, with creativity, community, ecology, and celebration at its heart. It was truly inspiring to see the festival flourish in the face of so much change, especially after two gut-wrenching cancellations. The “living theatre” was in full flow, wowing audiences with interactive performers, outlandish stage designs, and top-shelf music over the weekend.

Ahead of our exciting Winzum Beta launch, we thought we’d run through the 2022 Boomtown edition, exploring the new changes and what’s in store for the future. Stay with us for the lowdown. But before you read on, don’t miss out on our PlayStation 5, Logitech gaming headset, and £50 PlayStation Store voucher giveaways.

Boomtown Chapter One: What Changed?

For those unfamiliar with Boomtown, it's worth outlining the importance of the prevailing narrative involving the city and characters like Nickolas Boom. Up until 2019, each year ushered in a new chapter for the ever-expanding city, with things coming to a head in Chapter 11: A Radical City, when the AI character AMI grew sentient and locked Boomtown down before disappearing with all technology and data.

“State of Emergency” was the next scheduled chapter, but it never got to happen. Instead, creators Lak Mitchell and Chris Rutherford went right back to the beginning, imagining a city beginning to pick itself up from the mass destruction after Chapter 11. Chapter One: The Gathering inspired a change in layout with brand new districts and stages.

The most significant change was Boomtown’s size, with all districts now concentrated in the enormous natural bowl area once primarily occupied by the Lion’s Den. Grand Central was the closest thing to a mainstage, hosting the likes of Koffee, Kool & The Gang, and De La Soul over the weekend. It was significantly smaller than the Lion’s Den but slotted into the city’s immersive layout far more naturally than the old main stage.

Considering the outspokenly nervous reaction from Boomtown fans after the team announced its layout change, it was impressive how perfectly they pulled it off at The Gathering. It cut out the long walks and perhaps a little adventure, but the tradeoff was a concentrated web of streets and districts that felt all the more alive as a result.

Huge new stages like Origin and The Grid rubbed shoulders with cult micro venues like the Job Centre and Inconvenience Store, with an incredibly diverse music programme encompassing countless genres and cultures.

Winzum was particularly fond of the street parties operating during the day, celebrating musical communities like the Daytimers collective via seemingly spontaneous street parties and booming sound systems. They were exciting ways to generate more energy on the streets of Boomtown and let collectives spread their sound and culture.

A lot changed for the Boomtown Fair’s 12th edition, but the team pulled it off perfectly. The glorious (if sometimes too hot) weather definitely helped, although its success is testimony to the passion and creativity behind the scenes.

A More Ecological Approach to Festivals

Something at the heart of Boomtown’s transformation was an even stronger focus on being as environmentally friendly as possible. This was an overarching theme across the previous chapters, but The Gathering took things further with the site revamp and commitment to the Green Deal Circular Festival (GDCF) pledge.

Boomtown committed to achieving net zero scope 1 & 2 GHG carbon emissions by 2025 in 2019, transforming the festival into a circular economy city that leaves no trace on the natural environment and inspires everyone to take “immediate positive action”.

We also saw this more ecological approach to festivals at Glastonbury, part of an inspiring push from the creative industries to spearhead a new environmentalism. Real change often happens at a grassroots level, and festivals are one of the best places to start.

Boomtown 2022 Musical Highlights

As ever, Boomtown was impeccably programmed in 2022, offering musical delights to fans of drum & bass, afrobeat, and everything in between. The lineup wasn’t released until a week before the gates opened, part of a drive “to explore new ways of doing things”.

There was also less focus on traditional headliners, with Boomtown citizens encouraged to spread across the city and check out its endless array of venues and performers rather than camping out at the main stage. Still, Winzum got to see some incredible acts:

  • Afriquoi: An Afro-European collective joining the dots between traditional African music and electronic club-driven sonics, Afriqoui completely blew us away on Thursday at the Engine House. The band has possibly the best stage presence in the UK, with a euphoric and dynamic performance fusing instrumentation and live electronics.
  • Kool & The Gang: The legendary funk, soul, jazz, and disco sensations Kool & The Gang played on Sunday night with a set that was simply impossible not to dance and sing along to. We heard hits like Celebration and Ladies’ Night alongside other gems in their back catalogue.
  • Yung Singh: Yung Singh shot to fame after a now-legendary performance at the Daytimers Boiler Room takeover, showcasing how music from the Indian diaspora can inform and blend with underground dance music. His set at The Grid was among the best we’ve ever seen, effortlessly veering from garage to jungle with the crowd wrapped around his finger.
  • Hamdi: After a whirlwind few years with tracks like Skanka picking up worldwide support, Hamdi is a household name on the UK’s bass and dubstep circuit. The talented musician is as at home producing trancey uk garage as he is sternum-rattling dubstep, and his sets at Sub Lab and the Job Centre over the weekend were indicative of this.

Boundless Creativity & Adventure

Winzum saw a lot of incredible music at Boomtown, but it’s the boundless creativity and vital sense of adventure that captivated us the most. Thousands of performers mix with the crowds, with impromptu shows and important events in the festival’s storyline unfurling right before your eyes.

This boundless sense of creativity and adventure is so important nowadays especially, where the people in charge consistently seem to neglect imagination and expression. At Winzum, we always try to be creative with our competition prizes and absolutely love working with creatives in whichever way we can. Our “Winzum Spotlight” series is a great example, where we explored producers such as The Sauce and artists like Cheba.

What’s Next for Boomtown?

Where next for Boomtown after the barnstorming success of Chapter One? The team have already announced Chapter Two: The Twin Trials, scheduled to begin on the 9th of August 2023. It means we needn’t worry about the festival not being able to happen again, although there are some changes afoot.

Not long after Chapter One, Boomtown announced that the multinational events corporation Live Nation had bought a minority stake in the festival alongside SJM and Gaiety. The deal drew concern at first that Boomtown was headed for a corporate makeover with more focus on profit than artistic expression and immersion.

Fortunately, this doesn’t seem like it will be the case. As Boomtown explains,

  • "Like many other businesses in our industry, due to Covid our landscape has changed, and to stay ahead we have had to adapt and be agile. It's been a very tough few years. One of the decisions we came to in the last few months, as a direct result of the rising costs in staging such an epic and complex show, was to seek investment; a minority stake in the business from some of the most experienced names in the industry - SJM (9%), Gaiety (18%) and Live Nation (18%).This decision will not only allow Boomtown to continue its vision to be one of the most exciting festivals in the world, but it will also ensure the flexibility to continue to uphold independence on all decisions around business and creativity."

Seeking external investment is nothing new for creative companies. We think Boomtown has taken the right step here to secure its future and enable its founders to focus more on the creative adventure of the festival rather than the boring bits like logistics and supply chains.

How Winzum Aspires to Help Creatives

Helping creatives push forward culture has always been one of Winzum’s central focuses. We love sourcing bespoke and exclusive prizes from talented artists and musicians, helping them grow, and introducing new creatives to our online competition community.

Winzum is also passionate about helping people realise their ideas, so if there’s something you think we could help you with, we would love to hear how. Here are a few previous giveaways where we worked with passionate creatives to offer some exciting prizes:

Don’t Miss The Beta Launch

Did you know online competitions release endorphins? Our time at Boomtown set the mood perfectly for our Beta blast-off, where we finally get to show you lot all the exciting things we’ve been working on. Check out incentives and features like Earn Mode and get entering!

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