Glastonbury, Shambala and Calvin Harris amongst winners of the UK Festival Awards 2014

The 11th annual UK Festival Awards presented indie icons The Libertines with the title of ‘Best Headline Performance’ for their British Summer Time, Hyde Park set at a ceremony at The Roundhouse in London on Monday 1st December hosted by Fun Lovin Criminals frontman Huey Morgan. Also picking up awards were events including the mothership-like Glastonbury, crowned ‘Best Major Festival’, Creamfields for ‘Best Dance Event’ and Festival Number 6, a relative newcomer whose success saw them collect the ‘Line-up Of The Year’ prize.  Elsewhere in the artist categories global dance megastar Calvin Harris’ appropriately titled ‘Summer’ was chosen as the ‘Anthem of The Summer’ whilst up-and-coming Rock four-piece Wolf Alice were awarded ‘Best Breakthrough Artist’.  The popular Dorset bash Camp Bestival collected the trophy for ‘Best Family Festival’ meaning that Rob da Bank made two trips to the stage, his other being to collect the evening’s biggest honour, the ‘Outstanding Contribution to Festivals’ award, presented to him by none other than Michael Eavis. Dance music further dominated the winners list this year, in addition to awards for Creamfields and Calvin Harris with both We Are FSTVL and The Zoo Project Festival collecting prizes for ‘Best Medium-Sized Festival’ and ‘Best Small Festival’ respectively, and Shambala picked up the Greener Festival Award for their outstanding  contribution to sustainability in 2014.

Shambala's Chris Johnson with their award

The Awards followed on from a full day conference which also had a green theme and Alison Tickell from Julie's Bicycle moderated a knowledgeable panel which featured Rob Scully (Croissant Neuf Summer Party & Glastonbury), Penny Mellor (A Greener Festival), Chris Johnson (Shambala), Melvin Benn (Festival Republic) and Katie Madison in a Powerful Thinking sponsored panel titled 'The Show Must Go On'.  Other panels covered drug use at festivals, new technologies, secondary revenues and in the wake of a number of event bankrupcies in 2014, the problems inexperienced entrants to the festival scene can cause to fans and suppliers alike.