[press invite]
What makes Shambala Festival different?
Shambala Festival takes place in Northamptonshire every August bank holiday, in a “secret” location on a gorgeous estate. 2019 was the 19th edition of this family-friendly but still jolly naughty festival, and I went along for the third time. The main difference this year was that after having such an incredible time last year (read my 2018 blog here) we’d encouraged a huge number of friends to join us, so our gang had grown from just 4 people to over 20! The other huge difference this year was I experienced my second scorchingly hot festival of the summer (the first was Glastonbury) and it meant we were a bit slower in the day times, choosing to spend time in the shade when we could.
I’m going to try and explain what makes Shambala different to any other festival I’ve attended so far… and I admit now that this was a difficult task! But I’ve broken it down into different sections below, so have a read, flick through, and I hope I’ve done the experience justice!
Tickets for Shambala Festival are out now and will sell out! Click here to look at the ticket options!
The Vibe
This part is so difficult to write and I have to tell you I’ve written and rewritten it so. many. times (!!), but the reason for that is because it’s almost impossible to put into words the vibe of Shambala without feeling like I haven’t done it justice.
Imagine a place where everyone smiles, but nobody stares. Where everyone dances but nobody falls. Where everyone laughs at the world around them but never at anyone in particular. I wish I could live my everyday life in this place! And for one weekend in August every year, this utopia appears in Northamptonshire and is called Shambala Festival, and I get my wish to (temporarily) live there.
You can wear whatever your heart desires, be that as many or as few clothes as you want. Every person you speak to greets you with warmth and kindness. Making friends is as easy as saying hello to the person next to you at the bar. Random acts of kindness are deployed everywhere, and you never know what adventures the next hour may bring.
In short, it’s a place of love, acceptance, fun, new experiences, sharing and caring. It can be as wild or as chilled as you want. Never before have I seen a festival that marries a family friendly atmosphere with a crazy party nightlife quite like Shambala does. And that’s what makes it oh so special.
Let’s have a look at some of the other best bits:
The Music
I’ve listed a few of my musical highlights below from this year’s Shambs! One thing to mention is the Shambala line up is eclectic and features artists from all around the world! There might not be many of any chart favourites on the line up, but there are incredible global musicians who will blow your mind! It’s a festival for exploring new music, and following your ears as you walk around site to choose what takes your fancy…
Henge
This is a name I’ve heard a lot around the festival scenes but I’d never been in the right place at the right time, until Shambala! Henge are a band from a galaxy far, far away… and they play Cosmic Dross! A new kind of music never heard before! No really these guys are fantastic, they put on one hell of a show. Just watching them is fascinating, and their sounds resonate through your body til you find you’re stomping your feet without realising. They were absolutely brilliant on the main stage, captivating their audience from kids through adults to grandparents! It’s very hard to explain Henge, but I really want to stress that if you get the opportunity, go and give them a try! They’ll take you to another galaxy!
The Chicken Brothers
My favourite discovery of Noisily 2018, I’d been dying to see these two boys again! My prayers were answered on the House Party stage on the Sunday night of Shambs, and they were just as AWESOME as the last time! I had a good stomp on the rather small dance floor to their funky, bassy beats with awesome samples mixed in. This time they also had a brilliant MC with them spitting fresh bars over the top so it was extra saucy.
Electric Swing Circus
Electric Swing Circus ALWAYS bring the party! So much so that these guys have their own venue at Shambala – the Swingamajig tent! The line up is curated by Tom Hyland and all the Electric Swing Circus team so the music in there is always amazing. The band themselves play each night, and are a 6 piece swing outfit fronted by two powerful female vocalists. Watching them, it is impossible to be in a bad mood. I smile from the moment they play the first chord! It’s also completely impossible to not dance. You’ll be swinging your hips around before you know it.
Oh My God, It’s The Church! – secret set
Being a faithful Missionary for OMGITC, I had a few days prior knowledge that the mysterious TBA slot on Saturday night was going to be the Reverend and his Hail Marys. I was asked to help with the guerrilla promo on site, and with the help of my pals, we spent Friday handing out SINNER cards to people who looked like they had been naughty… On the back they invited the receiver to repent their sins at 2am at Madam Bayous. We loved identifying the sinners of Shambala! 😂
Onto the gig itself… it was super intimate compared to their main stage slot the year previous! And word had clearly spread, the place was packed out! But of course my gang and I had prepared and got there nice and early for a front row spot! The venue went absolutely crazy for Church and there were so many friendly faces in the crowd. My only complaint was that the sound in there wasn’t brilliant… but then it was awesome to see them play a small stage again. I’m hoping next year they get booked to headline the Kamikaze tent!
Monkey Pilot
Resident DJ at the infamous Whirl-Y-Gig events, Monkey Pilot is an absolute legend of the UK club scene. Having run Whirl-Y-Gig and DJ’d there for an incredible FOUR DECADES, you just can’t get more legit than this guy. We were super excited to dance in the Enchanted Woods to the sounds of this legend. He played a fantastic set filled with psytrance, big bass beats, tropical house and everything in between! I know it sounds crazy but it works! I encourage you to check out Whirl-Y-Gig if you’ve never been!
IDLES
One of the biggest alternative breakthrough acts of 2019, IDLES have drawn massive crowds at some of the biggest festivals this summer. Everybody seems to be talking about them. I did think they were a rather strange choice for Shambala… an outspoken shouty modern punk band, but their beliefs and morals lined up with those of the festival’s. They were the Friday night headliner and we got really stuck in. They had a Marmite effect on the crowd, but down the front the mosh pits were crazy!
Random Workshops
Power Ballad Yoga
On Friday afternoon we made sure to get over to Power Ballad Yoga having really enjoyed it at Glastonbury! It’s one of the longest running workshops at Shambala and for good reason. Kitty Sharkra and her partner, Chrissy Behind, play some power ballad bangers and instruct the crowd to follow their “yoga” movements, however they start the session with the disclaimer that it’s “not actually yoga”. Poses include air grabs, power chord stance, stadium claps and yes, downward dogs. This results in a whole lot of fun! And in the baking Shambala sunshine, laughter and singing rung out over the field. My friends and I giggled our way through Prince, Phil Collins and Jennifer Rush to name a few, while lunging and thrusting at each other in the name of light exercise. If you see PBY on a festival line up, I implore you to go and check it out! Get stuck in and it will be the highlight of your day, I promise you.
Sunday Supplement Cock Drawing Club
After last year’s brilliant fun at Cock Drawing Club I knew I had to return for 2019… Essentially this workshop is drop in for however long you want, and is a tent with the floor covered in newspapers. You go in, get given a pen, sit down, pick up some newspaper, and then go to town drawing willies wherever you like! It’s weirdly cathartic, and brings out everyone’s artistic side! We spent a good hour in there again this year drawing some masterpieces… Once again Eldon’s were particularly brilliant. It’s the same family that runs it every year and I love how they get their kids involved; running around asking if anyone wants some Tippex “to draw the white stuff coming out the end”, and shouting “WILLIES! DRAW SOME WILLIES!” to passers by. 😂
Sea Shanty Singing
In the Melody Yurt each day, Calico Jack hosted an hour of raucous voices singing Sea Shanties. This was incredibly fun, particularly because a good singing voice was not required! We arrived 5 minutes late but the tent welcomed us warmly, and we stood in a circle while Jack explained the history behind the shanties and taught us the melodies. There’s something about group singing that really gets you going, and sea shanties are perfect because they’re mid toned so suit all voices, and have a great rhythm too. It was a fab way for us to kick off our day on Saturday, properly roused us from a tired morning, and left us feeling like real shipmates!
Camping
The camping at Shambala is colour coded and certain areas are earmarked OK to be noisy late at night, others quiet after midnight, and of course there is a large family camping area. My friends and I always choose to camp in Pink which is one of the quiet after midnight areas, because we’re always out until the early hours and not sat at our tents making noise, and when we come back at 3/4/5am we want to come back to a quiet campsite – climb in and straight to sleep!
The lovely thing about Shambala is that the campsites are arranged in a crescent shape around the festival, so no matter where you camp you’re never miles away from the action. I did notice this year that the campsites filled up more than when I was there in 2018, tents were closer together with less space between, but I noticed this at a number of festivals. Shambala definitely hadn’t increased their capacity, so my theory is that people are buying bigger tents. In a way, this is a good thing! People are investing in bigger tents instead of buying small, cheap ones that won’t last. But it’s something festivals are definitely going to have to bear in mind as campsites will have to increase in size.
The toilets are all compost loos on site, and honestly they are kept the cleanest of any festival I go to! Plus, huge bonus, they almost always have toilet paper! Only on the rare occasion in the early hours of the morning did I have to dip into the stash of loo roll I keep in my bumbag.
There are free Posh Wash showers on site in a couple of locations however this year was SUCH a ridiculously hot weekend (30+ degrees every day) that the queues for the showers were always long. We were camped right by them so were able to keep an eye on the queue but I don’t think any of us actually used them because they never got short! What we did instead was either use the Heatwave Spa communal showers (as mentioned in my blog last year, these are communal nudist showers so you have to be OK with getting naked around others!) or we filled up a bucket and washed in a bikini by the hedge at the edge of the campsite. I’ve done this before with actual camping shower bags, never a bucket, but someone in our camp had brought one and it was a game changer! Adding to my camping essentials list immediately!
Food & Drink: veggie weekend and the milk ban!
Since 2016, Shambala has been a meat free festival. This means that none of the traders sell meat or fish; it’s vegetarian or vegan food for the whole weekend, and as I stated in my 2018 Shambala blog – it’s the best festival food I eat all year (and I’m an omnivore).
However, the festival is always trying to push itself further and become even more sustainable, and for 2019 they took another step and stopped dairy milk being sold on site. This meant traders selling hot drinks were only allowed to serve plant-based milks. They even went so far as to research the least environmentally impactful milks, and chose to only allow oat, coconut, soy and hemp milks. You can read more about their decision and their research here. I fully supported this decision (mainly because oat milk flat whites are delicious so maybe I’m biased), and on-site everyone was happy and seemed to agree!
I love that Shambala are always the pioneers with these amazing eco-initiatives. Other festivals could take a leaf out of their book! There’s always a few grumbles when people mention other festivals going vegetarian but let’s be real, it’s only for 4 or 5 days, the veggie food on offer at the traders is PHENOMENAL (honestly you won’t even notice with fake meats like seitan) and if you like you can still bring your own meat to the campsites – you could still cook yourself a bacon sandwich in the morning if you so desire!
A couple of my favourite food choices from our weekend:
The “Brieyonce” £8 – Brie cheese, spinach, and mushrooms toastie from Blend Nottingham. I’m a bit of a fiend for a cheese toastie but I’d not seen this food truck before. I was salivating at their list of melt concoctions though so I gave them a go and I’m glad I did! The ‘Brieyonce’ was full of flavour, packed with cheese and made with the most delicious seeded bread. The hardest thing was waiting for it to cool down so I didn’t burn the roof of my mouth! (eat toasties with caution, kids)
Masala Dosa with Onion Bhaji £8 – Dosa Deli. – This was my culinary discovery of the festival! Absolutely incredible! The onion bhaji was perfection (and they sell a bowl of just bhajis for £5 when you need a fried onion fix) and the dosa was filled with a chilli cheese potato curry type filling, served with a spicy sauce and a creamy raita-ish dip. The whole thing was super filling and bursting with flavour. I was mildly hungover when I had one and it healed me I swear!
Currywurst Dog £7.50 – Posh Dogs. – I loved Posh Dogs last year so was excited to try a different one this year! I went for the currywurst vegan dog with curry sauce, pickle, and crispy onions. It was pretty yummy but I wasn’t a huge fan of the sauce… maybe it was because it was 32 degrees and curry was not the one. I wish I’d gone for the Deli Dog with feta and olives that I’d had last year, but I still enjoyed this one once I’d scraped off some of the sauce. These guys are also super lovely and always play some banging tunes from their van!
SHAMBALA FESTIVAL TICKETS ARE OUT NOW!
THESE WILL SELL OUT SO GET IN QUICK!
They do offer a payment plan which is great to spread the cost of the ticket!
I wanted to add a few words from two of my friends on what they loved about Shambala, so over to Emma & Jason Dexter (who went to Under the Hill Festival this year for WMT)
It was our first time at Shambala and one of the things we loved the most is that all the food stalls are vegetarian or vegan! As we don’t eat meat and try to avoid dairy as much as possible, there were so many amazing food places for us to try. We really loved the breakfast hotdogs from Deli Posh Dogs and freshly cooked masala dosas from Dosa Deli. It was my first time trying a Club Mexicana burrito as well which was perfect when feeling a little bit hungover! I think it’s great that they don’t serve meat as it encourages people to try new things and think about their food and where it comes from. This year they stepped it up a notch and stated they wouldn’t be selling dairy milk, which suited us fine as I do love an oat milk flat white! [Love them oat milk flat whites too! – Jessi]
Emma Dexter
One of our favourite discoveries was the Confession Booth. We had seen the door for this and thought it was literally just a cupboard, but we were intrigued when we saw lots of people walking in and not coming back out again so thought we’d have a look. We could hear music coming from behind a curtain so we tentatively moved it aside, discovering a tunnel with a low ceiling that we followed all the way into a small room with some banging 80s and 90s club classics!
Jason Dexter
Huge thank you to Shambala Festival for inviting me back to review!
All photos by me or provided by the Shambala press team for review purposes.
I’ll finish this blog off with a bunch of photos of our fabulous time at Shambala 2019!
Great write-up! I didn’t know about the crescent shape camping area, TIL!
Cheers Adam! Glad it was helpful!
What a gorgeous review – really nailed what makes Shambala so damn fluffy! See you next year 🙂 x
Thanks Becka! See you next year! Already can’t wait 😀
I’m a Shambala veteran and it is my absolute favourite part of the year (yes better than Christmas!) I think you’ve captured the spirit very well ☺️
Beautifully put, I echo previous comments and happy reminder of all the things we missed but still had ball
tickets in the bag for 2020