Mosh pits and mask-free crowds: Download Festival pilot in pictures
From mosh pits and marriages to mask-free crowds, the pictures emerging from Download Festival’s pilot event are quite the sight after months without large-scale music events.
The test event in Donington Park, which opened on Friday 18 June, is hosting 10,000 guests – compared to the main festival’s usual 111,000 – and is being headlined by Enter Shikari, Bullet For My Valentine, and Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes.
Other acts on the lineup include Twin Atlantic, Creeper, Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls, Skindred, Saint Agnes and Jamie Lenman.
Guests were required to take a Covid-19 test before and after the festival, and provide proof of a negative result to gain entry.
Here are the best snaps and videos to come out of the event so far…
Oh I've missed this. #downloadfestival #downloadpilot pic.twitter.com/J2jO52XtN8
— Dave (@fallen013) June 18, 2021
Nothing to see here...just Boston Manor (@BSTNMNR ) playing to Ten Thousand people @DownloadFest #downloadfestival #DownloadPilot pic.twitter.com/mA30FSczMl
— Mike Inpoulton (@MikeInPoulton) June 18, 2021
👏👏👏 So happy to be back at a festival. #DownloadPilot #DownloadFestival @DownloadFest pic.twitter.com/VWLKEpr5LY
— Khya Gott (@Khya_Gott) June 18, 2021
Home for the next 3 days. #downloadfestival #Downloadpilot pic.twitter.com/hQVtPFRZzI
— Dave (@fallen013) June 18, 2021
Festivals: Back
Love: In the air
A delight! https://t.co/HmB2i0VSYh— Paul Hardcastle (@hardcastIe) June 19, 2021
The Download pilot comes after similar events were held in Liverpool in April and May, which the city’s health chief said were “undoubtedly successful”.
They form part of the government’s study to see how Covid-19 transmissions happen in crowds.
“I remember saying halfway through the pandemic, it sort of feels like we’re experiencing what the death of a band would be like, by just not being able to play,” Enter Shikari frontman Rou Reynolds told BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat ahead of the event.
“I haven’t written any music for like 18 months and the live shows is what I think gives us this fuel as a songwriter.”
He said he thought there would be a “real emotion to the whole thing” and said the festival “feels like it’s the light at the end of the tunnel”.
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