Music and students are two ingredients that have always gone very well together, and live music in particular has played an important part in university social lives up and down the country. There’s a group of students in Manchester however, who wanted more than just a local band down their student union bar; they were thinking big!
The result is the Mad Ferret festival, which returns to Manchester for its second year in 2009. The event, set up by a group of student friends, is named after the famous Manchester expression ‘Mad For It’ (get it?!). After a successful first year, the team are back with fresh ideas, more stages, and they’ve added an extra day’s fun to the schedule too.
The festival takes place from the 12th to 13th June in Platt Fields Manchester, and once again aims to showcase not just the best international talent, but the local music scene as well. This year’s line-up will see the likes of Finlay Quaye, The Streets, and Roots Manuva (pictured)
take their place among a growing list of headline acts, while the local talent will include The Travelling Band, The Gentlemen’s Dub Club, and Riot Jazz Band. Other additions to the line-up are a host of DJ sets, featuring Freestylers, Pendulum, and DJ Hype. The music promises to be an inspiring mix of Reggae, Dance, Rap, and Drum N Bass.
The team behind Mad Ferret also aim to involve the community in many other ways during the festival. Expect the unexpected, oh and a host of comedians, artists, and circus performers as well.
All this and more is coming your way in June, so what are you waiting for? Buy your tickets now! The first 500 tickets cost £45, and are £55 thereafter from www.ticketline.co.uk. There is no camping available on-site at this festival, so the Mad Ferret team are encouraging you all to indulge in the craze that is couch surfing (www.couchsurfing.com), where locals will host a visitor during the event.
If you’re ‘Mad For It’ then this is the festival for you. To find out more, visit www.madferretfestival.com. Some of the profits from this year’s festival will go to ‘Bollocks To Poverty’, the youth arm of Action Aid. To find out more about their work go to www.actionaid.org/bollocks.
Just been to this festival. Some problems; first of all £55 for a weekend ticket is a definite no-go, particularly because there is absolutely nothing going on Friday night. Do yourself a favour get a Saturday ticket only!! Secondly, it’s absolute murder to get in and they really need to sort out the entrance situation. Thirdly, why the f**k were bands advertised when they were only doing a DJ set (e.g. Pendulum), or advertised as having a ‘full band’ (e.g. Roots Manuva) when they clearly didn’t. Fourthly, turn up the f*****g music!!! The volume was far too low on the mainstage. Fifthly, the food/beer was over priced. Also, what’s with the police presence!? Sniffer dogs/getting searched left right + centre, can’t leave and come back in, not allowed to enter while smoking a fag… I could go on at the list of unbelieveably silly rules which were enforced. All in all, this was a ridiculously expensive festival which was of the size and standard that I’d normally expect for £20 at the most, filled with a load of rich students who seemed more intent on taking photos of each other for their facebook profiles, and being ‘seen’ at the cool tents, than actually enjoying any music (which to be fair, was mostly shite apart from roots manuva, the streets and some of the tents). If this sounds like fun to you than I’d recommend it, otherwise, stay away. Had it not been for the streets I would have been asking for a refund, this was a poorly thought out festival which was clearly about profit over product.
In reply to youy, Friday night was most definitely worth going for… my friends and I had an amazing night. Also, Pendulum was advertised as a DJ set, not the band, and was still awesome… they had to block off the tent it got so full, and everyone in there was going crazy for the music. The drinks were fairly average for a festival, I’d even say on the low side of festival prices. The volume on the mainstage was about as loud as it could go without any local residents compaining. I thought the police there was a good thing, as there were quite a few dodgy people trying to get in. The police were pretty good natured as well, they saw a lot of people skinning up and sniffing stuff but just left them to it. They did take down a guy selling GHB, but surely that’s a good thing? Not being allowed to enter while smoking wasn’t really a problem, just light up once you’re in there… most of the security didn’t really care.
All in all I thought Mad Ferret was well worth the money, and cheap if anything. The D&B was amazing, there was plenty to keep you occupied if you weren’t up for dancing, everyone was friendly and chatty and it was a great lay out. THe only problem I had there was there were too few toilets. I had to wait about 40 minutes on the friday, but there seemed to be more on Saturday, so the queue was only about 20 minutes. Not too bad for a festival really.
I thought the police presence was completely overdone……. Mad ferret was a friendly good natured festival and whilst a police presence is required, to
to arrive to a long line of bullet proof vest clad paramilitary looking police is quite distressing, are we living in a police state????
There was no trouble that I noticed unlike your average weeked at the printworks which probably has more people passing through and far more drunks and idiots and fights breaking out….. and far less police to control them.
The police wasted a fantastic oppertunity to promote themselves amongst young adults as trustworthy and approachable, I found so many of them lining the entrance intimidating……… I remember the old rave days when the police would let dogs run into a crowd causing panic… people getting crushed, having them stand around a party beating their shields….. fortunatly they werent anywhere near to their old intimidating self but….. the numbers of them was completely uncalled for and I am sure the cost has caused a financial crisis amonget the mad ferret organisation