Festival Review: Free for All Festival, Stapelmoor, 20 13 July 2024
Festival number 2 this year – yet another one that took us roughly 2.5 hours of travel, this time towards the north. The main reason we decided to go there were Caliban, who I personally loved a lot at Full Force last year. Another big plus was that Maelføy were part of the line-up and we’d also seen Venues before (as support for Blind Channel), so all in all the line-up didn’t sound too bad given the price.
Here’s my little festival report.
First of all: I struggled a lot with deciding how to approach this review because for me, the festival was not a pleasant experience. I will try my best to stay somewhat neutral. The bands were nice, but the overall vibe of the festival was off for me.
General info on the festival
Despite its name, Free For All is not free. The price of 25€ for a one-day festival with quite a nice line-up is worth paying. I don’t know who’s behind the organisation, but I think it’s mostly done by volunteers (seemed like half the village was involved).
The festival is in a park in Stapelmoor, which is a part of a town called Weener in East Frisia, close to the North Sea and the Dutch border. The next big city might be Oldenburg, which is still quite a bit away.
There were signs to the parking lot, which was a meadow that was already full when we arrived. So we were sent back more or less the way that we had come, basically, to park in the parking lot of a kindergarten. Parking cost us for 3€ for an unsupervised parking where we could’ve parked for free if we had simply stopped there before.
From said kindergarten, it was a 10-15 minutes walk to the park where the festival was at. I had the impression that this was closer than the actual parking meadow, but I might misjudge. Getting in took a while, especially because there was only one security woman present for quite an amount of female visitors.
The park isn’t that big and there was mostly meadow, but they had put woodchips on the ground to prevent the area from getting too muddy (which was smart because as to be expected in northern Germany there was a lot of rain throughout the day). There were only few spots where you could seek shelter from the heavier rain. It was bearable underneath the trees though, especially with a rain coat or cape (simple capes were handed out at the entrance for free if you needed one). One could say they were prepared as best as they could for the weather (north Germans don’t know bad weather anyway, but I’m whiny and not from the north).
First big downside: There were portable toilets and I don’t know if we were just too blind or if there really wasn’t any water to wash your hands after using the toilets. Neither was there any desinfectant available. I only went to the toilet once when we arrived (which wasn’t very much after the festival opened, so the toilets were still okay) and later decided to try to just pull through. Luckily it wasn’t so hot, so we didn’t have to drink much. I guess it would’ve been an option to go to a close Döner imbiss to use their toilet, but we didn’t do that. But yeah, what I learned from that is to pack my own desinfectant for the next festivals, just in case, because I don’t like touching my food after using a portable toilet and then not having a chance to clean my hands.
Food-wise there was pizza, burgers (with vegetarian options), an Asian imbiss (with fried noodles, spring rolls and the like), crepes and churros, good old Bratwurst, curry sausage and fries. At the beginning there was also a table with waffles, but they closed quite early. For me it was a little tricky to find something safe to eat that I felt like eating, mostly because the allergens were not always labelled clearly (not the organisers‘ fault though, since the food stalls were external).
Speaking of the food stalls: I was definitely put off by the female personnel of one of them wearing aprons with the typical big-boobs-sexy-lady-print. Mostly because one of the people working there looked like she was barely 18?! Probably not in the organisers‘ hands, but it was one of the things that were just off for me and killed the vibe.
I missed hot drinks though. I don’t know if the waffle booth had any coffee, but we found neither coffee nor hot chocolate, which sucked a little given the weather.
To buy food, you could pay by cash. For the drinks you had to exchange money into tokens, but it was possible to return them and get your money back if you had any of them left. The stalls for changing were open all the time and you didn’t have to wait for long.
Other booths and stalls included festival merch and artist merch, the anti-discrimination organisation Kein Bock auf Nazis, a tattoo artist, glitter tattoos and a stall by the German drugstore dm where you could also get glitter tattoos. A few more that I can’t really remember that much, I wasn’t interested in their offer.
I personally felt like the Kein Bock auf Nazis presence and some of the pride flags that were shown were more or less the organisers‘ attempt at creating an atmosphere of diversity, inclusion and a safe space. To me personally, the mission failed. I didn’t really feel safe at all times.
Don’t get me wrong. There were visibly queer people, there were alt-kids, but something about the audience felt off to me personally. I didn’t like the overall vibe. Part of that was because of the overwhelming amount of merch of controverse artists, part of it numerous incidents we either had ourselves or observed, where people behaved straight-forwardly rude (not in a north-German-distanced way, but actual actual rude), disrespectful or weird. And part of it was because of the felt absence of a person to turn to. No idea if the festival had any kind of awareness concept. I didn’t spot an awareness team and I don’t know if I would’ve felt safe addressing any concerns to the security guys. There was police present from time to time, but that was it. I wouldn’t have known who to turn to if anything had happened.
Another factor is that I was particularly whiny that day since I hadn’t slept well and I was very exhausted. There wasn’t really much space to sit down and at some point I considered just going back home before Caliban would enter the stage. I was annoyed by smokers, I was annoyed by people crashing into us without apologising (not speaking of the moshpit, happened in the „food area“), I was annoyed by family members of „staff“ acting disrespectful towards us as paying visitors.
I don’t want to be more explicit. There were several incidents that just made me feel generally unwell and I was basically more than happy when we finally hit the road back home. This is also all very subjective, I bet a lot of people had a great time there. I didn’t. And quite a big factor was that I as a generally insecure queer woman did not feel safe.
The bands
We missed Sascha und die Heringe because we were a little too late (we saw them when we arrived, but it took us too long to get in). We also missed Slope because I was exhausted and freezing, so we went back to the car instead to have a little break and also get my second hoodie. And we didn’t watch Unearth because it’s simply not our taste in music. So that’s that.
Nuking Moose
The first act of the day for me were Nuking Moose, whom I’ve had never heard of before. They play melodic death metal, it was a nice warm-up, but to me personally nothing too striking. I liked their sound and their stage performance, but they didn’t blow me away as much as I had hoped (given that I have a weakness for Melodic Death Metal). It was still a solid performance. And at that point, I was still in good spirits…