Bestival has been crowned with the ‘Best Major Festival’ gong at the 9th annual UK Festival Awards, which took place at London’s Roundhouse tonight. The event’s continuing success, despite being one of the youngest contenders at the awards, is a triumph for the independent sector.
The win means that Bestival, which was founded by BBC Radio 1 DJ Rob Da Bank, has won awards at almost every stage of its development since scooping ‘Best Medium Festival’ in 2005. Rob, also, featured on the Emergency Board Meeting at the UK Festival Conference earlier today.
Festival No. 6, the event that launched this year at the unique location of Portmeirion in Wales, has also proved a hugely popular choice among voters and judges, scoring the title of ‘Best New Festival’. Festival No. 6 triumphed further when British music legends New Order, present at this evening’s award ceremony, collected the prize for ‘Headline Performance Of The Year’ and the festival’s mastermind Gareth Cooper scooped ‘Promoter Of The Year’.
18-year-old rising singer-songwriter Jake Bugg beat off fierce competition from a short-list including Mercury prizewinners, Alt-J, to the title of ‘Best Breakthrough Act’. Voters, of which there were a record half a million this year, chose Django Django’s incredibly catchy track ‘Default’ as the ‘Anthem Of The Summer’, while the coveted ‘Best Line-Up’ category, one of the few categories not vote for by the public, saw rock music once again coming out on top with Download Festival emerging victorious after much deliberation from the judging panel.
Ever a pressing concern at festivals, ticket buyers considering where to pitch up their tents in summer 2013 may do well to note Cambridge’s Lodestar festival that was bestowed the honour of ‘Best Toilets’.
As previously announced, the evening’s recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award was Live Nation’s Chief Operating Officer, John Probyn. Probyn collected his accolade in the wake of both an Olympic and record-breaking year, and following a continuing highly-celebrated career in the entertainment industry.
A colourful array of the year’s best festivals celebrated into the night as Camden Crawl, Latitude, Green Man, Bloodstock Open Air and Global Gathering also joined the ranks of the winners picking up awards across the evening. A full list of winners can be found below.
Steve Jenner, Festival Awards co-founder comments: “It is pleasing to see so many first-time category winners breaking through this year and indicative of the dynamic movements in the market at this time. Much more than winning gongs, though, the Festival Awards are about celebrating and uniting the UK festival industry which, in these turbulent times, is more vital than ever”.
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