Dates September Founders Dave Cox | Years active 2004 - present | |
Genre Hardcore, punk, crust punk, dub music, folk punk Location(s) Forest of Dean, United Kingdom | ||
Common Ground Festival is an annual music festival held in England, United Kingdom. The festival is a not for profit fund-raiser for various grass roots charities - focusing on political activism, Animal rights & other causes. The majority of bands are from the Punk, Crust, and Hardcore genres, along with various others such as Dub, Ska punk and some Folk punk acts.
Contents
History
The festival was originally called 'Dirty Weekend Festival' and started in Rhyl, Wales in 2004. Originally a one-day event, the festival soon became a 2-day festival, moving from venue to venue around North Wales until managing to find a more permanent location in Wrexham from 2011 until in 2013 the festival was cut short by an electrical fault caused a fire at the venue. In 2014 a new home was found for the festival at the workhouse in Llanfyllin, however, even before the festival occurred, local residents were up in arms due to the controversial nature of some of the bands booked to play there. The festival went ahead with no problems but under pressure from the council and local MP, the venue wasn't able to allow the festival to go on the following year.
2015 saw the festival move to a location to the south of Chester. This year saw crowds of approximately 500 people but again had problems, this time due to noise complaints from local residents .
2016 will see the festival move south, to a location near the Forest of Dean under the new name of 'Common Ground Festival'.