‘It’s going to be weird’: Download festival opens with no social distancing

Moshing is surely the final stage of the journey back to normality in a post-lockdown world. Hundreds of sweaty people slamming into each other with full bodily contact might not appeal to everyone, but it is impossible not to appreciate how monumental a step it is after more than a year of being told to stay 2 metres apart.

“After being distanced for so long, it’s going to be weird. But I’m going to be straight in there. You’ve got to throw yourself in at the deep end,” said Shay Fagan, 22, one of 10,000 rock and heavy metal fans arriving at Download Pilot festival on Friday eager to return to the mosh pit.

The festival, the UK’s largest rock event, normally welcomes about 80,000 people to Donington Park in Leicestershire each June, but this year it is operating at reduced capacity as a pilot of large-scale events ahead of next month’s full reopening in England and Wales.

All attenders were required to submit negative lateral flow and PCR Covid test results before arrival, but once inside the festival gates there were no social distancing or face masks required.

There was also no leaving, with all attenders required to camp for the full duration of the three-day festival.

“Once you’re in, you’re in. But I normally stay for the full five days anyway,” said Fagan, who has attended the festival six times.

To get her Download fix last year when the event was cancelled, she and her friends camped out in a back garden for a mock festival.

“It’s been really sad without gigs. I haven’t seen any live music since February 2020,” said her friend Connor Pritchard, adding he would be straight into the first “wall of death” – a form of moshing where the crowd splits in half and runs at each other.

“It’s a little taster of what life could be again,” said Hayley Mackay, 28, who had travelled up from London. “We were a little apprehensive because when we were queueing up it felt like so many people, but we feel like it’s going to be safe.”

The event was a particularly special occasion for Jamie and Lauren McAloon, from Glasgow, who tied the knot in a humanist wedding ceremony in front of the main stage surrounded by their Download “family”.

The couple met at the festival in 2008, and Jamie proposed there in 2011 – they were due to get married last year and made the last-minute decision to go ahead with it at the Download pilot after it was announced in May.

“This is our second home, this is where everything has happened. We had to get married here, even if it was in the rain,” said Jamie.

The event was organised in just a few weeks but features a strong lineup of some of the biggest rock bands in the country, including Enter Shikari, Bullet for My Valentine and Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes.

As the first bands took to the stage on Friday evening, it didn’t take long for the crowd to erupt and an energetic mosh pit to form, beer flying through the air.

“I think we deserve a dance, what do you think?” shouted Han Mee, lead vocalist of Hot Milk, as a sea of people clad in soggy ponchos surged towards the stage.

With the end of restrictions pushed back by four weeks in England and Wales, there is a lot riding on test events such as Download Pilot to prove that festivals and the live music sector can open back up safely.

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“It’s emotional and hugely exciting. And I’m confident that, providing you put people in an environment where they are all tested or vaccinated, people can enjoy music very safely,” said Melvin Benn, the director of Festival Republic, which runs a number of large-scale events including the Download, Wireless and Leeds festivals. “I pay tribute to the fans who are coming because they are putting themselves forward as test dummies, so to speak.”

Researchers will be using CCTV cameras to monitor crowd density across the site, and to try to pinpoint any areas of Covid transmission – whether that be in the mosh pit, the crowd, the queue for the bar or the campsite.

Benn said he had pushed the government to allow a camping festival in the events research programme, and when they agreed, Download was his first choice.

“The Download festival community is an exceptional community, the music is marginalised to a large extent, so the festival where they can gather means a huge amount,” he said. “This audience needed that gathering probably more than any other.”