So, naturally, this is the point where we’re supposed to tell everyone to come.
We’re supposed to talk about the bands, tell you how brilliant it’s going to be, push the socials and try to get as many people through the gates as humanly possible.
Instead, we’d like to ask you something slightly different.
Please don’t come to BogFest.
At least, don’t come if you’re looking for a big festival.
Because we don’t want BogFest to become one.
BogFest was never conceived as a miniature Glastonbury. It isn’t about VIP areas, expensive tickets, corporate sponsorship villages or squeezing another few thousand people onto a field.
It’s a free music festival in Llanwrtyd Wells, created around a very simple idea: bring interesting people, great musicians and a community together for a weekend and see what happens.
And we’d quite like to keep it that way.
Small is a feature, not a problem
One of the inspirations for how we think about BogFest is The Do Lectures, founded here in Wales.
Do became special partly because it resisted the temptation to become enormous. People travelled from around the world to gather in a field in west Wales, but the intimacy was the point.
You didn’t disappear into an audience of 20,000 people.
You met people.
You talked.
Speakers, organisers, visitors and volunteers shared the same spaces. Conversations continued long after the formal programme finished.
That idea has stayed with us.
There is something powerful about events that are deliberately human-sized.
And that’s what we’d like BogFest to become.
The person next to you might be playing later
This weekend you’ll hear some extraordinary musicians.
But we don’t particularly want a huge divide between the people on stage and the people watching them.
You might find yourself having a pint next to someone who is playing later.
You might discover an artist you’ve never heard of.
You might start a conversation with someone you wouldn’t normally meet.
Those moments are difficult to manufacture.
They tend to happen when an event is small enough to breathe.
Why is it free?
Because BogFest is also about Llanwrtyd Wells.
We want local families to be able to wander in.
We want someone who wasn’t planning to attend a music festival to hear something coming from down the road and decide to investigate.
We want visitors staying locally, drinking in the pubs, eating in the town and discovering one of the most unusual little places in Wales.
And we don’t want a ticket barrier separating the festival from the community hosting it.
That means BogFest will never make much sense on a spreadsheet.
That’s OK.
Some things are worth doing precisely because they don’t.
The Chapel
BogFest is also part of a much bigger experiment.
We’re restoring an old chapel in Llanwrtyd Wells and trying to turn it into a place for music, ideas, creativity and community.
Not simply another venue.
A place where interesting things can happen.
BogFest is a glimpse of that future.
The Chapel isn’t finished. Neither is BogFest.
We’re building both as we go.
And perhaps that’s part of their charm.
So, seriously, please don’t come
If you’re looking for giant screens, enormous crowds and a perfectly polished festival experience, there are much better places to spend your weekend.
But…
If you like discovering musicians before everyone else does;
if you like sitting around talking to people you’ve never met;
if you believe small towns can still create ambitious things;
if you like the idea of a music festival where the community is part of the festival rather than something fenced off outside it;
then ignore everything we’ve just said.
Come to Llanwrtyd Wells this weekend.
Bring some friends.
Have a pint.
Listen to some music.
Talk to someone you don’t know.
Just don’t tell too many people.
We’d quite like to keep BogFest small.