Big changes have been announced for Reading Festival for 2025 to improve the experience and clamp down on noise issues.
Each year, representatives of Festival Republic who run the event provide a debrief to councillors on how the event.
2024 saw the introduction of The Chevron, an open-air stage which hosted The Prodigy and Skrillex.
Despite this, there were complaints by festival goers who struggled to hear their favourite acts over other performers, which is called ‘noise bleed’.
A representative announced that The Chevron Stage will be hosted in a large tent this year at a recent Reading Borough Council meeting.
She said: “It [2024] was a great event for us, lots of fantastic media coverage of world-class artists, a brand new stage launched, the Chevron Stage, which was a brilliant new stage for us, it’s the first time we’ve changed the two principle stages since Covid.
“It came with some issues, we had some noise issues from the noise bleed between the Chevron Stage and Main Stage, and we also had some impact off-site despite being within the licence limits, I think that was compounded with the weather.”
The placement of The Chevron into a tent is something of a reversion back to how the festival was pre-pandemic.
The BBC Radio 1 Stage previously occupied the space where The Chevron is situated before it was replaced with the Main Stage West, which was open air from 2021 to 2023.
The Radio 1 stage was contained in a tent, but could become crowded during large performances, such as rapper Dave’s set in 2019.
With the open-air Main Stage West and The Chevron, Festival Republic adopted a vaguely similar layout to the notorious Woodstock ’99 Festival.
Events in 2022 were compared to Woodstock following reports of gate-crashers and uncontrolled fires.
The representative added 2024 saw the introduction of “incredibly successful” campsites with the Quiet, Solo and Eco camps.
The quiet camp will be renamed ‘The Garden’, the Eco Camp will turn into ‘The Meadow’ and the camp for solo festival-goers will be called ‘The Valley’.
The Grove community camp will also be established with special camps requiring pre-booking, with the main camping being called ‘The Fields’.
Toilets will be changed from ‘long drops’ to vacuum toilets, with other facilities including pod showers, makeup areas and a football tournament at the neighbouring Rivermead Leisure Centre.
The representative added the festival has made a range of partnerships with safety organisations, mentioning Stamp Out Spiking and Safer Spaces which clamps down on sexual abuse and violence against women at events.
Festival Republic will not be doing ‘front of house’ drug testing, with tests on substances taking place at the ‘back of house’ instead.
To support the Reading economy, the organisers have agreed to investigate signposting revellers to businesses this year.
Welcoming this in a Facebook post, councillor Sarah Hacker (Independent, Battle) said: “A few years ago, one of the festival gates was closed, cutting off direct access to the Oxford Road and, therefore, the businesses that would see an uplift in trade during the festival.
“Festival Republic has committed to looking at ways to signpost festival goers to our high street, so some of the wealth the festival brings is shared with our community.”
The presentation was given to the council’s housing, neighbourhoods and leisure committee on March 11.
Melvin Benn, managing director of Festival Republic was in attendance.
