free festival

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David Bowie's song Memory of a Free Festival, recorded in September 1969 and included on the 1969 album David Bowie, mentions the free festival organised by the Beckenham Arts Lab and held on the Croydon Road Recreation Ground on 16 August 1969.

The 1972 to 1974 Windsor Free Festival, held in Windsor Great Park, England, was a free festival. The 'organisation' was mostly Ubi Dwyer distributing thousands of leaflets and asking people and bands to bring their own equipment and create their own environment – "bring what you expect to find."Clarke, M. (1982). The Politics of Pop Festivals. London: Junction Books.

"Free festivals are practical demonstrations of what society could be like all the time: miniature utopias of joy and communal awareness rising for a few days from a grey morass of mundane, inhibited, paranoid and repressive everyday existence…The most lively [young people] escape geographically and physically to the ‘Never Never Land’ of a free festival where they become citizens, indeed rulers, in a new reality." Un-authored leaflet from 1980, quoted in George McKay's Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance Since the Sixties (p. 15).[https://books.google.com/books?id=_x25qcM223AC&dq=Free%20festivals%20are%20practical%20demonstrations%20of%20what%20society%20could%20be%20like%20all%20the%20time%3A%20miniature%20utopias%20of%20joy%20and%20communal%20awareness%20rising%20for%20a%20few%20days%20from%20a%20grey%20morass%20of%20mundane%2C%20inhibited%2C%20paranoid%20and%20repressive%20everyday%20existence&pg=PA15 McKay, G. (1996). Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance Since the Sixties. London: Verso Books.]

{{Main|Category:Free festivals}}

{{See also|List of historic rock festivals}}

• Woodstock Festival, 1969 (partly free)
• Croydon Road Recreation Ground free festival, 1969{{Citation |title=Memory of a Free Festival |date=2024-10-20 |work=Wikipedia |url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_of_a_Free_Festival |access-date=2025-03-29 |language=en}}

• Phun City 1970
• Glastonbury Free Festival 1971
• Windsor Free Festival, 1972–1974
• People's Free Festivals at Watchfield 1975, Seasalter 1976 and Caesar's Camp 1978
• Trentishoe Whole Earth Fayre 1973–76
• Stonehenge Free Festival, 1972–1984{{cite web |title=Remember the Battle of the Beanfield {{!}} Andy Worthington |date=2009-06-01 |website=The Guardian |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230529004532/https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/jun/01/remembering-the-battle-of-the-beanfield |archive-date=2023-05-29 |url-status=live |url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/jun/01/remembering-the-battle-of-the-beanfield}}
• Battle of the Beanfield (1985)
• Rivington Pike/North Country Fair 1976–78
• Deeply Vale Festivals 1976–79
• Leamington Spa Peace Festival

• Elephant Fayre, 1981–86
• Jazz at the Lake: Lake George Jazz Weekend (started as a free festival in upstate New York in 1984)

• Torpedo Town - Hampshire, UK{{Cite web |title=UK Free festivals . -Torpedo Town free festival |url=https://ukrockfestivals.com/torpedo-town-free-festival.html |access-date=2025-03-29 |website=ukrockfestivals.com}}
• Castlemorton Common Festival, 1992
• Free Edinburgh Fringe Festival
• Free Fringe
• CzechTek
• Dragon Festival, Orgiva, Spain, 1997–2009
• Przystanek Woodstock
• Davestock - Vancouver Island, BC{{Cite web |title=Davestock |url=https://www.davestock.ca/ |access-date=2025-03-29 |website=Davestock |language=en-CA}}
• Heineken Music Festivals, 1990–1995, UK

• Barışarock, 2003-2008{{Citation |title=Barışarock |date=2024-08-26 |work=Vikipedi |url=https://tr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar%C4%B1%C5%9Farock |access-date=2025-03-29 |language=tr}}

• Mile of Music - Appleton, Wisconsin
• Green World Yoga & Sacred Music Festival, Skåne[http://www.yogamela.se Green World Yoga & Sacred Music Festival, Skåne]

• Wisbech Rock Festival - Wisbech, Isle of Ely, UK.{{cite web|url= https://www.visitcambridgeshirefens.org/whats-on/wisbech-rock-festival-562|website= www.visitcambridgeshirefens.org|title= Wisbech Rock Festival|accessdate= 8 October 2022}}

Simon and Garfunkel 10-146.jpg|Simon and Garfunkel at The Concert in Central Park

Cambridge Strawberry Fair 2011 stage.jpg|Cambridge Strawberry Fair 2011

Strawberry Fair 2007, Cambridge - geograph.org.uk - 460832.jpg|Strawberry Fair 2007, Cambridge

Normaal parkpop 25juni2006.jpg|Parkpop 2006

West Fest main stage.jpg|West Fest in San Francisco

• Free party
• New age travellers
• Alternative society
• Teknival
• DIY culture

{{Reflist}}

{{Commons category|Free festivals}}

• [http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/free-festivals-menu.html The Free Festivals 1969-1990 - ukrockfestivals.com]
• [https://books.google.com/books?id=_x25qcM223AC&dq=Free+festivals+are+practical+demonstrations+of+what+society+could+be+like+all+the+time%3A+miniature+utopias+of+joy+and+communal+awareness+rising+for+a+few+days+from+a+grey+morass+of+mundane%2C+inhibited%2C+paranoid+and+repressive+everyday+existence&pg=PA15 George McKay - Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance Since the Sixties:Free Festivals]
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JCkUZAwvEA Battle of the Beanfield - ITV unseen broadcast]

{{Rock festival}}

{{Music festivals}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Free Festival}}

Category:Counterculture festivals

Category:Free festivals

Category:Rock festivals