Photo by Hinrich Carstensen
Before you go to a festival, you need to pack a few things of course. Especially when you’re planning to spend some days there. For that reason many festivals publish a festival-packinglist in advance. But no one’s having such a related list for summing up the festival in retrospect. So us from NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION tried out to categorise the MS DOCKVILLE FESTIVAL 2014 with 7 criteria in the manner of a festival-packinglist.
1. Special moments [X]
There have been many special moments at the recent DOCKVILLE FESTIVAL, just to list a few: the moment ÓLAFUR ARNALDS accompanied NILS FRAHM during his performance to play piano with him (also the other way around), the instant the Danish newcomer MØ took off her shoes to jump into the audience for a bit crowdsurfing or the minute the German siblings HUNDREDS came back to the stage to play an encore although it’s not conventional at festivals.
2. Good weather [ ]
Unfortunately we can’t tick this box, rain infiltrated the whole weekend. Nevertheless the audience didn’t care – they knew that rain appears a lot in a North German city like Hamburg and have been equipped with wellingtons, yellow ‘Friesennerzes’ (foreigners, google that one) or rain capes and of course warm clothes.
3. Fun [X]
Although the weather hasn’t been on it’s best behaviour the visitors had a lot of fun, for instance, during watching their beloved bands play, studying the exposed works of art or discover new and special places hidden behind some trees at the festival location.
RY X (Photo taken of his Facebook profile)
4. Unique location [X]
As every year the festival happened at the Elbe-islands very close to the river Elbe, which means the visitors could watch boats passing by, seagulls flying around or the water rippling itself. And as already mentioned, every space has been a little specific. Plenty of art-filled places to relax, dance around or hide from the rain.
5. Enough camping space [ ]
Regrettably campers who arrived on Friday instead of Thursday had their problems to find a place for their tents: almost every little square was already occupied, at least at the camping-spot Steuerbord.
- Photo by N-Joy
6. Good variety of stands [X]
There have been various little stands with food: you had the choice between the famous German Handbrot, vegan Falafel, Pizza and a lot more. Furthermore, some stands from music and fashion labels, a shop especially to send postcards or little photo booths to get a printed memory. Simply everything the heart could wish for.
7. Great love for details [X]
As soon as you entered the festival location, you realised that the festival hosts place value on its details. The art, the stalls, the stages; simply everything seemed to be unique, elaborated and varied – a fact that shows that this festival isn’t about commerce and consumption, but rather about bringing together music and art lovers who know how to appreciate such events.
Little bottom line:
It has been pretty worthwhile to endure the rain and stormy weather for all festival visitors. The event was, once again, a weekend full of memorable moments, great performances and happy people. Along these lines, until next year dear DOCKVILLE!
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