It’s a tale as old as time. For every fun aspect of London living, there is an angry mob of local residents that vehemently oppose it.
They came for the Tate Modern viewing platform.
They came for Soho’s late licenses.
They came for our al fresco dining.
Now, they’re after the London day festivals, with locals arguing they’ve become too popular, too populous, too loud and too bloody messy.
Bog off, I say. One of the best parts of summer in London is having the ability to board one or two buses, can in hand, and offload into a beautiful local park to witness some world-class music while getting a little wonky. It takes the sting out of a missed Glastonbury ticket and redirects festival-goers from the country to the city, making London a festival hotspot in its own right.
It raises millions for underfunded councils who desperately need the money, and it helps to fund community events in the local area. It adds a fresh layer of fun to summer in the city, with each park now boasting its own local day festival, allowing residents to attend (often with the chance to do so for free) and stumble home on foot afterwards.
My footloose and fancy free attitude towards London’s day festivals is not shared by local resident associations, who are struggling to pull the flag poles out of their posteriors and just enjoy the show.
The argument is that day festivals cut off access to the park for too many days
Earlier this month, an action group entitled Project Brockwell Park announced they had raised £30,000 in aid of taking legal action against the council for holding day festivals in Brockwell Park this summer.
See also: A guide to London's 2025 day festivals
The south London park will play host to a series of festivals, including Mighty Hoopla, Field Day, Cross the Tracks and City Splash. On April 9, the group sent a pre-action letter to the council claiming that this decision was “unlawful” and warned of a potential judicial review.
Their argument is that day festivals cut off access to the park for too many days, gatekeeping residents from using their local green space during the height of summer.
They also highlight the damage to the ground that can occur during these kinds of events, which allegedly left Brockwell Park in a bad state throughout the rest of summer. And while the events in Brockwell Park are only scheduled to take up 17 days this year, Project Brockwell Park claims that it actually puts the park out of use for 38 days.
As such, they want these festivals to be subject to proper planning permission. If approved by the courts, this could prove to be a landmark ruling for the usage of London’s parks, threatening the future of day festivals in other locations.
And there certainly is discontent in other locations. Victoria Park, which has long played host to London mega-festival All Point East, and will this year see the first edition of Charli xcx-headlined festival LIDO, has had its own fair share of issues.
In 2024, Tower Hamlets council approved an increased capacity for large scale events held in Victoria Park, raising the maximum number of attendees from 5,000 to 20,000. Local community group Victoria Park Friends told news outlet Roman Road that this decision would “be detrimental to both park users and residents”, adding: “Major events are noisy which causes significant distress to both park users and residents, particularly young children and older people.”
This makes me bristle. I’m sorry to the babies and pensioners who have a few sleepless nights every summer, but this is bigger than a sound issue, and it’s bigger than them. Living in London is all about checks and balances: the price of being in the best city in the world is that sometimes, somewhere, people are having fun.
Something is making Londoners think it’s okay to be a NIMBY, and actually, it’s not okay to be a NIMBY
I don’t know whether it’s a result of Covid, or the increasingly self-centred nature of the world, or the decline in partying habits of certain generations. But something is making Londoners think it’s okay to be a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard), and actually, it’s not okay to be a NIMBY. Being a Londoner should be the antithesis of being a NIMBY: having things in your backyard is part and parcel of living in a capital city.
London’s day festivals are a key jewel in its summer crown (its flower crown, if you will) and the prospect of getting rid of them, or even relocating them, feels like an unnecessary effort of bitter individuals who chose to live in the centre of a city. Yes, Brockwell Park is not Soho, but it’s still a park in a capital city. And maybe the price of unfettered access to a gorgeous park 348 days of the year is the 17 days for which you have to surrender it to make 30,000 other people very happy.
Yes, it sucks that you don’t have a garden and are probably paying upwards of £1,000 to live in a city where your closest green space is a park that’s now full of young people wearing biodegradable glitter, but that’s London, baby! That sense of life, opportunity and culture is probably why you moved here in the first place, or probably why your parents did, in case you all forgot.
If you need help understanding how to handle it, look to the residents of Notting Hill, who at least have the good sense to either pack up and leave for carnival weekend or monetise their property to be used as toilets, kitchens and viewing platforms.
They’ve been doing it for nearly 60 years — they know what’s up. We should also be grateful there aren’t camping festivals in the middle of the city. Reading puts up with it pretty well, and that’s a pretty disruptive three day affair, with a corner of the city overrun by teenagers for an entire weekend, tinnies, tents, trolleys and all.
In a 2023 article for The Sun, entitled “We live next to Reading Festival – we watch celebs from our balconies and save hundreds without facing massive queues”, three sets of nearby residents spoke to the paper (which I’m sure was hoping for a more incendiary headline) and told them that they did, in fact, rather like the festival nextdoor. Are we really going to allow ourselves to be less tolerant than Reading residents? Come on, guys.
It’s okay, really, while these residents are shaking their fists at the sky, I’m shaking the demons off my back in Brockwell Park, having the time of my life. Let’s just hope I’ll still be able to do so next year.
Maddy Mussen is a London Standard columnist
