Ways to Make Your Music Festival More Family Friendly

Main Gate- If your festival has a long wait at the main gate, this is a great chance for you to promote a family friendly atmosphere. If your festival gives kids a special wrist band with their parents information, you can do this when cars are waiting in line. Volunteers can hand children waiting in cars mini craft kits or crayons with special coloring pages. Have bands playing near the entrance during those busy times. Remember, some families just spent hours in the car. This can be a very rough time for them and it is their first impression of the festival.

Campgrounds- When it comes to ways that the campgrounds can be family friendly, there are the obvious ones. You should have a campground that is the designated “quiet family” camp and another area that is for the louder festival goers. Having a volunteer information station and water source in the quiet family camp can be important and will make things easier for families staying there. There are also plenty of activities that you can offer right in the quiet family camp. Nightly bond fires, star gazing, or bedtime story hour. A festival can offer morning activities for when the parents are not ready to leave the campsite, but the kids are awake and ready for fun!

Security/ Volunteers - Festival security is extremely important when it comes to a festival. Even an extremely safe festival will still have to deal with lost parents or kids. Make sure your lost child policy is easy and simple to follow.

Stages- Remember that children have very sensitive ear drums and prefer to be at a stage that does not hurt their ears. Turn the music down a bit so they can be dancing in the front and still feel comfortable. Also be sure to offer ear plugs to the smallest festival goers.

It’s also important to think about how wonderful it is to hear your favorite band on the main stage. Why would our youth not feel the same way? If your festival offers a big, beautiful main stage it’s a good idea to have groups that will appeal to all ages and have special bands just for the youth and the millennials at that stage. Give everyone the chance to hear their favorite band on the big stage.

Food- I was at a festival meeting where we were thinking about what food vendors we wanted. We all agreed that while it was wonderful to have vendors offering delicious nutritional food, sometimes a person just wants some comfort food when they are at a festival all weekend. Kids feel the same way. Vendors that offer kid friendly foods like grilled cheese, hot dogs, pizza, fresh fruit and yogurt are the vendors that my two kids prefer. Also remember that parents don’t want to feed their kids junk food all weekend, so find vendors that offer healthy alternatives to our favorite foods. If you can find a vendor that makes the pizza in a super healthy way so that adults love it as well, then you found the perfect vendor!

Kids Area- I feel like I have so much to say about how to have a successful kid’s area that I could write an entire article on just that topic (maybe I will some day). But there are a few very important basics that I wanted to touch on. It’s important to have a variety of types of activities that would appeal to a variety of kids. Some kids are very crafty, while others enjoy sports, drama or music. You also need to make sure there are activities for a variety of ages. It can be frustrating to take your toddler to a music festival, then to discover that there is nothing in the kid’s tent for them! Also remember that to have a successful kid’s area, a great deal of set-up is required as well as money to buy supplies. Many people think that a kid’s area will be fine with some construction paper and crayons. How boring! It’s OK if you don’t have a lot of money, but giving the kids area coordinator a small budget can go very far. Some kid’s areas offer only scheduled activities, only on-going activities, or a combination of both. I really think that it’s up to you as the festival planner to decide what is going to work.

Surveys- Your festival survey can be extremely important when it comes to finding out how your specific festival can be better. Ask parents “what was the most difficult part of your weekend?” Note that this question is different than “what can we do better?” Parents may not know how things could be better, and they may not know a solution, but I’m sure they could all tell you the most difficult part. Listen to their comments. You may not be able to fix the fact that their kids could not fall asleep in the tent, but maybe that nighttime story hour would make things easier for everyone. Festival planners are wonderful at creative problem solving, be creative in how you help parents!

Out of the box ideas- What I love about festivals is how many of them come up with creative ways to make their festival family friendly. Quiet nursing areas with complementary tea for nursing mothers, street performers juggling for kids while they wait for the next band, a lady dressed as a fairy offering children a spot of glitter on their hands. Be open to new ideas and see what comes your way!