Festivals in public parks: the battle for our urban green spaces

Campaigners battling to prevent back-to-back festivals closing off large sections of a south London park are taking Lambeth Council to court. And, as the Protect Brockwell Park group readies for a summer of protest, a wider debate is raging over what public green spaces are for, and who should have access to them.

'Sacrosanct' spaces

For most people who live in British cities, the local park is their "only regular contact with the natural world", said Rebecca Tamás in The Guardian, and now this is "at risk". These "once protected havens for humans and wildlife alike", are being cordoned off for weeks at a time, with access sold by councils to promoters of music concerts and festivals. Defending urban green spaces is "as crucial as keeping sewage from our rivers"; "however cash-strapped" local councils are, "these spaces should be sacrosanct".

It's not just the lack of access, the noise and the disruption that's annoying locals; it's the mark these events leave on the parks – quite literally. In Glasgow, campaigners complained about gigs at Bellahouston Park trampling hundreds of wild flowers and damaging footpaths; in Newcastle, locals were dismayed by the damage done by event vehicles to stone pillars and large areas of grass, after a festival in Leazes Park last summer.

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The increasing commercial use of parks "might be easier to swallow" if the profits were ploughed back into essential council services, said Matthew Garrahan in the Financial Times. But that's by no means the norm: the takings from Lambeth's Brockwell Park events, for example, will go into various community projects and "park maintenance – more of which will surely be needed in the aftermath".

Bog off, locals!

Locals may argue that festivals are "too popular, too populous, too loud" and "too bloody messy", but they can "bog off", said Maddy Mussen in London's The Standard. The opposition to holding events in public spaces "makes me bristle". I'm sorry for "the babies and pensioners who have a few sleepless nights" but this issue is "bigger than them".

I'd say the "price of unfettered access to a gorgeous park" for 348 days a year is the 17 days "you surrender it to make 30,000 other people very happy".

Live music in Britain is "in a perilous position", with its steady decline "exacerbated horribly" by the Covid pandemic, said Ben Lawrence in The Telegraph. The music sector contributed £6.1 billion to the economy last year, and "big tours", by the likes of Coldplay, accounted for three-quarters of the total. The up-and-coming acts who play in these events "may be the Coldplays of tomorrow"; with fewer live music venues than ever, their careers are "reliant" on these park festivals.