Splendour in the Grass makes a muddy mea culpa
‘Some people would argue an ‘F’,’ says festival co-founder Jessica Ducrou. ‘I wasn’t expecting a glowing report card. It was our most difficult Splendour, for so many reasons.’
For many years, the organisers of Byron Bay music festival Splendour in the Grass have been sending out surveys to patrons as a way of learning what worked, and what didn’t, to ascertain a post-event report card.
After the 20th anniversary event in July last year – a muddy, frustrating debacle where a “perfect storm” of factors saw the three-day festival almost shut down from extreme weather conditions – the team at Secret Sounds held their breath to see what the 50,000 or so attendees might say.
As for how Jessica Ducrou marked her own report card following last year’s event – which was headlined by US acts The Strokes and Tyler, The Creator – the festival co-founder told The Australian she’d rate it as a “C” or dead average.
“Some people would argue an F,” said Ducrou. “I wasn’t expecting a glowing report card.
“It was our most difficult Splendour, for so many reasons.
“I think our audience there were incredibly generous, and understood the weather was beyond our control – but equally, there were probably expectations we would have been more prepared for a weather event.”
The average grade from the 3000 or so survey respondents was more like a B: 69 per cent of attendees said they were glad they went, and 67 per cent agreed the music was “amazing and made everything worth it”.
Flip those results, though, and about a third of respondents were unhappy with their experience – a situation that pains Ducrou and co, who have grown the festival from a boutique winter event in 2001 for about 7500 campers into one of the nation’s biggest annual live music drawcards.
On the Friday afternoon last year, with storm clouds overhead and much mud underfoot, organisers made the call to cancel all performances that day, including a headline set by British pop act Gorillaz, to ensure crowd safety.
A major factor in this decision was the huge traffic delays to get vehicles into waterlogged campgrounds – stemming from months of rainfall in the region – which made it hard to move around the site at North Byron Parklands.
“We pride ourselves on our organisation and our quality of experience; quite clearly, we didn’t deliver on that,” she said. “We are truly sorry about that, and we feel quite gutted by the whole thing, because ultimately, we’re doing this for a shared experience.”
“Believe it or not, it’s not necessarily just about profit; I could think of easier ways to make money,” she said. “We all are really engaged in the process, and it was really traumatic for all of us: for people that were there that weren’t having a good time, and for us.”
“There’s been a lot of soul-searching,” said Ducrou. “As hard and confronting as [the audience feedback] might be, we can’t stick our head in the sand and pretend. We have to hear it, and we have to make changes.”
Which is what the team has done, using Falls Festival over the recent new year period as a test run, with almost 20,000 attendees at North Byron Parklands.
Major reviews of the site’s traffic management, amenities, ground dressing, footpaths, drainage and topography have been undertaken and implemented, and the company has created a new role of climate manager to deal directly with inevitable weather impacts on its events.
In about five months, the team hopes to once again welcome about 50,000 music fans to the site, with the line-up to be announced next month.
Said Ducrou: “Despite the challenges of 2022, we’re excited about 2023, and we hope people will give us a chance, come on back and enjoy Splendour, as it should be.”
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