Your Perfect Festival · Result
The Boutique Forest
Two thousand people, one stage, and no way to check your messages.
Designed rarity: about 10% of takers
You are drawn to festivals small enough to have a shape: two thousand people, one stage, and trees in every direction. You tend to believe the twenty minute walk in from the car park is doing real work, and by the time you arrive you have stopped being a person with a job. People like you notice the moment, usually on the second night, when you recognise a third of the faces and the crowd starts looking after itself.
You usually go for the whole weekend and let the site set the pace: one stage, one row of food, and a programme that runs from late afternoon into the night. You leave the phone in the tent because there is rarely signal anyway, and you would rather learn the lineup by hearing it. You often care more about the trees, the river and the walk than about who is on the poster.
Your strength
You can tell a small festival from an underfunded one.
Your blind spot
You sometimes judge a festival by its capacity, and have written off good events because eight thousand people went.
Key takeaways
- Your festival is two thousand people and one stage in the trees.
- The site does more of the work than the lineup does.
- Small festivals live on people who care, so keep showing up for them.
Rooms to try in Seoul
- The Air House Festival, Nami Island, Chuncheon: A three day house and techno weekend on an island in the Bukhan River, small enough that you find your friends again by the second night.
- Jarasum, out of season, Gapyeong, Gyeonggi: A river island with one bridge and a tree line, exactly the shape of site you keep returning to.
Rooms to try around the world
- Bass Coast, Merritt, British Columbia: A canyon site with a no filming rule the crowd actually keeps, so the night is lived rather than recorded.
- Shambhala, Salmo, British Columbia: A farm, a river and no phone signal, run by the same family long enough that the site feels like an institution.
- Dekmantel, Amsterdam: The same forest and the same size every year, with one strong programme instead of six competing ones.
Your nearest types
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