Why I accepted free tickets to Lido
I recently accepted free tickets to attend Outbreak Festival at Lido as a guest of AEG, the contractors for both Lido and All Points East. The reason? I wanted to see for myself just how loud the events are for punters.
Despite having lived within earshot of the festivals for nearly 9 years (3 years of which in the resident ticket draw area), I’ve never been able to get tickets to the festivals, due to bad luck in the draw and their prohibitively high prices.
Since being elected in 2022, I’ve attended all the community outreach days and walkabouts I’ve been invited to, to see how the festival is run, challenge the organisers and contractor managers and generally try to work towards a more respectful and positive experience for everyone.
However, having never seen the main festival event days, I felt I was missing some of the experience, therefore I was curious to attend and get a sense of the events for myself.
My main reason for accepting the tickets was to see how loud the events are when you’re inside the festival area on the main event days. I also wanted to see how busy the event area felt. These are related to two aspects which local residents always raise with me when discussing the festivals: residents are appalled by how loud the events are and by how much of the park they take up.
My experience?
I am shocked by how loud the music was – I needed ear protection standing approximately 150 metres away from the stage and speakers. I didn’t want to get any closer because it was so loud.
The atmosphere inside the festival village was spacious and very relaxed – I can understand that there are health and safety issues to take into account, but I did find myself questioning whether the event space needs to take up so much of our beloved park.
The caveats
I support the Friends of Victoria Park’s position that AEG is a much better event organiser than previous contractors. I’m also very supportive of AEG’s efforts to improve the environmental impact of the events – Massive Attack’s show was entirely battery powered and the batteries are entirely charged from the grid or from on-site hydrogen power cells (all of which I was taken to see). I understand that this work is sector-leading, and I am excited that events in my ward can potentially start to wean the events and other industries off using polluting diesel-powered generators.
I also support their efforts to ensure as much as possible of the waste created by the event is recycled and the organisers always make a donation to the upkeep of the park to mitigate any damage caused.
To conclude
Despite the caveats, on balance, I believe the noise levels are so high that I do not think that the events strike an adequate balance between allowing event-goers to enjoy the events and respecting the needs of the community which hosts them.
There is also still a way to go in environmental impact (I was told initially that all food onsite would be vegetarian, which turned out not to be the case). Residents have also raised with me the need to complete an environmental impact assessment to understand how the noise and lights might affect the wildlife that lives in the park.
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