And The Winners Are……..
by Lauren John. Published Today.
News has just filtered through to music.co.uk about the European Festival Awards, a new ceremony that recently took place at industry conference Eurosonic Noorderslag, to reward, yes you’ve guessed it, the best in European Festivals.
With so many of the worlds best music festivals happening right here in Europe, competition must have been fierce in each of the categories. Some of the more familiar nominations in the shortlists include Glastonbury in the Best Major Festival Category, Republic of Ireland’s Life Festival in the Best Small Festival Category, with T in The Park up for Best Line-Up. There were also shortlists for Best Newcomer, where nominees included Paloma Faith, Gossip, and The Black Lips, and Best Headline Act. The shortlist here included festival favourites Blur, along with Radiohead, Metallica, Neil Young, and Bloc Party.
These shortlists, along with the overall winners in each of the award categories were chosen either by public vote, or in a few cases, by a jury. The public vote was conducted via online portal Virtual Festivals Europe, a site which received over 100,000 votes for this project. The jury meanwhile, was made up of representatives from some of the leading concert promoters, festival organisers, and music press across Europe. But enough with the science bit, on with the show. This years European Festival Award winners are:
Best Major Festival: Heineken Open’er Festival (Poland)
Best Medium-Sized Festival: Dour Festival (Belgium)
Best Small Festival: Cactusfestival (Belgium)
Best New European Festival: Openfields Festival (Belgium)
Best Line-Up: Rock Werchter (Belgium)
Festival Anthem Of The Year (in association with EBU): Coldplay – “Viva la Vida”
Best Artist Newcomer (in association with Eurosonic): White Lies
Best Headline Artist: The Prodigy
There were also additional awards chosen by the jury:
Green ‘N’ Clean Festival (in association with Yourope): Öya Festivalen (Norway)
Artists’ Favourite Festival: Rock Werchter (Belgium)
Promoter Of The Year: Herman Schueremans (Live Nation, Belgium)
Lifetime Achievement Award: Jan Smeets (Pinkpop, The Netherlands)
Congratulations to all the winners, and let’s hope we see many more events like these in years to come, that both reward the good quality music events coming out of Europe, and work with the festival goers/music fans to maintain this standard. But what do you think? Have you attended any of the winning festivals, or an event which you think should’ve been included? Let us know below.
More gigs and show news coming soon, right here @ music.co.uk
