overview

Urban Lawns is a quiet gem of a two day festival that managed to continue to entertain despite a torrential downpour throughout most of Sunday. Meaning most people left rather than enjoying the bank holiday Monday. Set on the flat with camping on the hill the site looked full of promise on Saturday morning. With a very reasonably priced weekend ticket and proceeds going to the charity set up to help Cloakham Lawn Sports Centre develop its facilities.

On a sunny weekend this festival would be a glorious start to the outdoor festival season, perfect for families with the arena being so well laid out and so flat and so clean – well done all the attendees who kept using the bins provided.



The musical styles on both days vary wildly but they still work well overall. With dad rock, urban punk, folk, acoustic, nu-wave, ska, metal, old school rock, indie, retro-electronica, blues, jazz and more musical styles represented over the two days. See separate page of band reviews.

Down in the arena was a tented bar offering Otter ales, Tricky Cider and lager etc as well as soft drinks. There’s the marquee stage, a main outdoor stage, kids' activity tipi and beside it paintball shooting range and sumo suits. Elsewhere were circus skills, face painting and a big bouncy castle. Stalls like Mutate and various eating places, such as Mashed, Veggie Heaven, Al’s Urban Food, Choppers Spit and the Sports Centre cafe all serving main meals for a reasonable £3-4! Plus warming homemade locally produced soup – essential for Sunday.



Kids' were busy painting murals, making flags and constructing butterflies on poles run by Angelina who also performed at the festival. While opposite the NDA (New Devon Army) stall served up cream teas and people lolled in hammocks at the hammock stall and ate ice creams. None the wiser to how different the weather on Sunday would be.

The bands are unfamiliar by and large, but the £1 programme gave us insights into all of them, who are in the main unsigned or local acts, and all of them are enjoyable! There's also a CD available of a few of the acts for £2! A great idea and more of the unsigned acts on it next year, it would be a terrific selling point.

After sampling a few acts on both stages, programmed so there were no clashes, I was thinking here's a festival that's got it right, it had a lovely vibe building. Yet, despite this the arena was fairly quiet although the campsite was busy, with people preferring to stay in their tents. No idea why, when the acts catered for all music tastes and were all of a high level of musicianship.



The location is pretty, overlooked by fields and trees, the site is regaled with flags and décor much of it murals by a local sixth form student Nigel Walton. However on side of the arena is flanked by housing and I believe the plan for next year is to move it the other side of the sports hall, with no residential area right next door. Thus reducing noise for locals.

Okay, perhaps the only failing of small festivals like Urban Lawns is that for adults there's little else to do but watch bands and chat with a beer but it's hard to offer more alternatives at an event this size. I certainly couldn’t fault the selection of events for kids to keep entertained. Possibly a comedy, talks or adult workshops like dance or crafts utilising the sports hall rooms and a bit more performance art. But it's only in its second year; things like this can come along later.

Soon the festival is in full swing, the food tastes terrific, the sun has arrived, the bands are doing covers we can sing along or dance to and kids and adults are face painted. There are pirates about in force and there's a huge age range across the spectrum and dogs on leads are welcome. As the evening draws in the bands gain increasing numbers in front of the stages and the quality of the acts just keeps improving.



Come then end of the first day the acts have been superlative! See quick band round up {here - link} and we close our night watching the excellent F.L.A.M.E. fire and light show while club TASTY a DJset have the crowd dancing away in the marquee until the small hours. We're tempted to join in, but our daughter's too tired so we draw a close to the night.

Sunday is a total contrast! The morning is wet and windy. It could dampen spirits but we're prepared for bad weather and despite getting to the arena a little later than we’d hoped, we are buoyed by the prospect of more entertaining eclectic acts and more fine local food and beer. We miss Dead, Dead, Dead as the stages have been re-jigged to put all the acts under canvas in the marquee. My own fault for sleeping in because of the weather!

With the food being locally sourced, the festival is doing all it can to have a greener carbon footprint, nice one Urban Lawns, no doubt other festivals will start to follow suit in the next few years.

The rain picks up by mid-afternoon, it's nice to be at a festival that carries on despite the downpour, but with no one wandering outside around arena many of the stallholders start packing up and before long the site looks like a ghost town. How different from the previous day!

In the marquee the numbers fluctuate as most people have decamped to the sports centre bar, with an assortment of bands attracting various age ranges. The face painting is still going strong and more pirates arrive and clearly this year is the year of the festie pirate look.



The bands that play the stage stay to swell the numbers in front of the stage as the wind builds and site art begins to blow away, as does bits of infrastructure like the ticket office!

Despite the rain outside people continue to visit the bar next door and straw is put down to mop up the soggy bits around the entrance to the marquee and the bands keep coming, wheeling in their own kit and keeping us entertained.

The food stalls remain and still produce wonderful warming food and hot drinks, but in the end our daughter succumbs to the weather and we leave before the headliners take to the stage.

Our way back to the campsite is littered with abandoned tents and many tents are suffering in the extreme conditions. I’m amazed the festival has been able to overcome such extremes of weather.

Fingers crossed next year will be better! It was a great festival, one we all enjoyed and will be sure to return next year. We will hopefully camp over the Sunday night and enjoy bank holiday Monday and much sunshine – the festival deserves it.

Well done to the organisers for putting on a great range of entertaining acts, and such a relaxed peaceful festival, bravo to the stalls who gave us great food and stayed despite the weather and a huge thanks to the bands and the people who kept it all going despite appalling conditions on the Sunday.

A wonderful little festival, with an awful lot of potential! Great for kids, teens, music fans and adults alike! You’re sure to find a band you’ll love here! I was hoping we’d enjoy this festival and a bit worried it would be not much more than a village fete – but it far surpassed our expectations. Devon has another new decent outdoor festival at last!

For band reviews click here.

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