Lowlands (festival)
A Campingflight to Lowlands Paradise (commonly called Lowlands or Lowlands Festival), is an annual three-day music and performing arts festival, held in the Netherlands. The festival is held 68 kilometres (42 mi) east of Amsterdam in Biddinghuizen, at Spijk en Bremerberg, which is adjacent to Walibi Holland.
Lowlands
Third weekend of August
Spijk en Bremerberg, Biddinghuizen, Netherlands
1993–present
Mojo Concerts, Loc7000
~55,000
Although the main focus is on music - rock, pop, dance, hip hop and alternative - Lowlands also offers indoor and outdoor cinema, (street) theatre, cabaret and stand-up, ballet, literature and comic strips.
In recent years, the festival is attended by around 55,000 visitors, and features over 200 acts on more than ten stages every year which are named according to the NATO phonetic alphabet apart from the Heineken stage (named after the beer brewer Heineken, the main sponsor of the festival since 2015). The majority of stages are inside large tents to protect spectators against inclement weather, with the largest being approximately the size of a regulation football pitch.
History[edit]
1967–1968: Origin and debacle[edit]
The festival is a successor to one of the first Dutch pop festivals: A Flight to Lowlands Paradise that was organised in November 1967 by the Utrecht-based artist and painter Bunk Bessels. This festival took place in the Margriethal of Jaarbeurs Utrecht. The entry fee was 10 Dutch guilders (approximately €4.50), including breakfast. This 18-hour-long event had no top acts but included experimental theatre, dancing, poetry, films, body painting and massage.
On 28 December 1968, this festival was held a second time, postponed by a month from its original date of 23 November in an attempt to get Jimi Hendrix to attend the event. This could not be arranged, and other large acts such as Jeff Beck and Jethro Tull were cancelled. However, Pink Floyd remained on the bill. In the end, the show was sold out to its capacity of 18,000 visitors, though many attendees were unable to get inside resulting in unrest and police intervention.[1]