INTERVIEW: Lak Mitchell on 8 Years of BoomTown

My abiding memory of BoomTown was the first time I walked from the campsite to one of the stages. It was around dusk on the first night, I hadn’t had time to acclimatise properly yet, but someone had said we were going to the ‘Boombox’ stage, so I just went along with it. The next thing I remember feeling was a kind of giddy bewilderment as we walked through the streets of the Downtown district, smokey and awash with colours, only to arrive and find that it was a literal, gigantic boombox, blasting out DnB at a volume that nearly turned my hair white. It was at that moment that I realised how far removed from your average festival BoomTown really is.

Since 2009, the town and its affixed, sprawling narrative has been growing and gaining a reputation as a unique, enthralling experience, one which has played a vital role in the dramatic reshaping of the UK festival scene which has been taking place. The town was, as far as the narrative is concerned, was first discovered by one Nickolas Boom, but speaking in more literal terms, it was Lak Mitchell who originally started the BoomTown train rolling in 2006 along with Chris Rutherford and few others. To say it’s come along way since then would be a horrendous understatement. Even when I got to talking with Lak over the phone, I could feel the bustle and excitement emanating from his end of the line, as various other BoomTown staffers rippled in and out of the background, some of them shouting and whooping as they went, and this was on a weekday afternoon, months before the actual event.

Was BoomTown always destined to turn out this way though? “It wasn’t about an annual theme that changes every year, it was about the entire festival having a theme and an ongoing narrative. So yeah, I would say that it really did, the initial concept 8 years ago exactly where it is now.” He explains. “The clue is in the name there really, we always envisioned that it was going to be more than your average festival. Calling it a town in the first place, the whole idea was that BoomTown existed as a real life city and once a year it closed its doors and had this annual fair.”

This time around, BoomTown is in the grip of a revolution, as a rebellion uprising seeks to removed the brainwashed mayor and in fact remove any sense of singular dominance. That’s a pretty resonant idea, so it’s hardly surprising to find that a lot of the driving force behind BoomTown’s narrative is drawn from current events. “We’ve all got high opinions on the way the world’s going and I think ultimately the ambition with BoomTown is to be able to educate people on certain matters around the world and give something back, rather just being a place where you can go and get a bit a wild for four days. There’s more to it, really, it’s a platform to do some good, and it’s a big thing for us to significantly support charities, it’s a big long-term goal for us. We’re not in it for making lots of money or any of that crap.” He says, occasionally turning to exchange a word or two with an excitable colleague.

Beyond this story driven, consistent aesthetic, BoomTown also has a reputation for environmental and charitable support, festivalgoers pay a £10 deposit for a bin bag on the way in, and if they fill it they get the tenner back, plus another bin bag, at which point cleaning up actually becomes profitable. A chunk of the overall profits go to charities every year, and it’s a mindset that fuels the very core of the festival. “There’s a lot of things in the pipeline coming up.” Lak says. “Drug awareness is a really big one, and drug education, looking after your health. We’re doing a lot about passion, giving to others, there’s a bit of politics in there as well but we have to quite careful with it, can’t delve too deep into these sorts of things. A big thing for us this year is sustainable living and environmental initiatives, so that’s another big angle that we’re all really passionate about.”

With all this in mind, it can be easy to forget that BoomTown is still a music festival, fundamentally. It’s also one of the most phenomenally eclectic ones this side of Glastonbury, to the point where it’s almost set the precedent for what an atmosphere focused, multi-faceted festival sounds like. “We’ve all been involved with Glastonbury for years, that’s obviously like our Grandfather, and like going home. You get to see the inner workings of all these festivals, we’ve worked at loads of different ones all over Europe, all over the world, actually. We’ve had really good insights into every different type of event and how they work, which has been quite key to the initial operation.” Lak recalls. “It’s interesting, what’s happened since we’ve been growing up. It feels like there’s a whole host of almost spin-off BoomTowns popping up around the country, which is incredible, it feels like we’re bringing about a whole new type of festival. Big multi-genre festivals. When we first came about there weren’t really many other than Glastonbury that did more than their niche genre, really, and now I can think of about 5 or 6 which are going for the reggae, ska, drum and bass approach, which is amazing, it’s really nice to know that we’re inspiring others.”

When you actually see the town, the district distinctions, both in terms of style and genre are quite striking in the way they give you a sense of place. You follow sounds as much as you follow sights. This year boasts perhaps the most muscular lineup the festival has ever had. “It’s great that we’ve managed to get Damian [Marley], we’ve been trying to get him for years, it was a thing of proving that we’re actually a big enough festival to take them. Although we’re one of the biggest festivals in the country now, we’re still relatively under the radar, and those big acts, they do a bit of research and don’t quite realise the scale of what it actually is, so we have to get straight to them and really show them that actually they’ll be playing on this huge kind of temple, and it really is a big show.” Lak says, pointedly. “There’s some great old school reggae acts like Morgan Heritage, Inner Circle and some other ones that we’re really excited about, legends. Actually, I’ll tell you what, one of my highlights is probably the Levellers, I sort of grew up with them, I was obsessed with them when I was 10 or 11, so to have them playing for us is quite amazing. They are from were we’re from.”

As you can see above, Inner Circle seem to be just as hype for BoomTown as the rest of us, which is nothing if not a good sign. Perhaps the thing that’s most astounding about BoomTown though is the fact that it’s managed to stay independent for this long. Many UK festivals have been beckoned by the allure of outside sponsorship and rapid expansion. Some have survived it, and others have gone supernova, collapsing under their own weight. BoomTown continues to flourish, sustaining itself, but how? “We just had to expand at a ridiculous rate, and I think that’s the only we’ve been able to not rely on additional funding; it’s down to that rapid growth. We’ve been really fortunate in that people have always wanted to buy tickets more and more each year, and it’s allowed us to be able to expand but it has expanded more quickly that any other festival in the country really because we’ve needed to finance those ever growing outgoings, it’s kind of ridiculous, it just seems to go through the roof every single year.” He says. “There’s such incredible music across every single genre, that whenever we add more people we’re like “Well, we can put you on a stage covering that sort of genre” and trying to pull in every single tribe from across the world together.”

Of course, even at that scale, finance is always an issue. Even some of the largest festivals in the world barely make a profit year on year, but you’d be hard pressed to find any of their staffers being motivated primarily by money. Lak and his teammates are no different. “You have to do it out of passion I think, because if you were doing it out of money you just wouldn’t get it off the ground. We were really lucky that we’ve managed to break even every year, because we didn’t start with any pot, so in year one if we’d have lost even 500 quid we’d have been bankrupt. We’ve been quite fortunate that we’ve come out on top every year, just about.” Lak says, in characteristically clear-cut fashion. “It’s the nature of the beast, if you look at us, it’s completely independent, it’s got no major sponsors and it’s got hundreds of creatives and thousands of crew involved so there’s just so much money going out left right and centre, and even if we’re paying people what we feel we should be, it’s tight, it’s got to be for the love.”

So I guess the only thing left to ask is, what does the future hold? “We’d like it to develop into more of a community, being more of an all year round thing. The community and the spirit still being there, with various events happening around the country and Europe, Europe’s quite exciting to look at because we get a huge amount of people coming over from Europe for the festival because there’s nothing like BoomTown over there. I think we’re going to get to a certain point where we don’t want to get any bigger because we don’t want to lose that feel that we’ve got. I think we are getting closer to that point.” This idea of a festival transcending the limitations of one lengthy, ludicrous summer weekend is often talked about, and it feels like BoomTown is a lot closer to it than many others. “We get hundreds of people contacting us with these absolutely incredible ideas, from all over the world who just want to be a part of it. A lot of our creative crew have really grown their careers and their visions, they create really elaborate new ideas, it’s like this huge brain that we’ve kind of pulled together. We drive each other forward.”

If any of this resonates with you, get your ass to BoomTown this year, no written word can do it justice. As wonderful as the UK festival scene is, there’s a tendency for individuality to get lost in the party vibe. When you’re at BoomTown, you never forget you’re at BoomTown, nor can your appreciation for the artistry involved in every facet of it ever soften or diminish. It’s a living organism, we’re just the shot of adrenaline it gets given once a year.

 

BoomTown takes place near Winchester from the 11th to the 14th of August, grab tickets here