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RESONANCE 2025: The History of UK teknivals in opposition to festival commercialisation
RESONANCE 2025: The History of UK teknivals in opposition to festival commercialisation
Recently, in an old colliery in the middle of the woods just south of Retford, thousands of people gathered around speakers, generators, rental vans, and tents for the UK’s first proper Teknival in a long time - Resonance 2025.
After a six hour drive north and countless phone calls to the party line, the coordinates were finally released. Throughout the night, convoys of cars and vans trundled down the woodland tracks into the concrete clearing before party-goers began unloading supplies, tents, and speakers – ready to party well into Monday afternoon.
The mainstage displayed 56 custom built subwoofers below 16 tops, a mammoth rig blasting a wall of sound. This set-up was funded by multiple free party crews across the UK, each owning different elements of the rig. Alongside this ridiculously large set up included at least 10 more sound systems, with more arriving throughout the weekend, displaying impressive artworks characterised by the classic free-party-teknival black and white colours and spiral patterns.
The party contained food stalls, merch stands, people selling water, snacks, and beer. There were individual performers wielding flaming hula-hoops, juggling, and even a trampoline in front of one of the rigs.
Tekinvals are free, DIY gatherings that can stretch on for two or three days, or simply until they are shut down by the police. By design they are chaotic; there’s no hired security, no ticket system, no centralised organisation in control of the party. They are run by the people who attend them, and the people who bring out their rigs, driven by collective effort.
The sound systems, often costing tens of thousands of pounds and taking countless hours to build and maintain, and inevitably drawing attention, are provided by crews purely motivated by passion and commitment to the culture, rather than a profit incentive.
Teknivals emerged in the early 1990s, born from the new age traveller and acid house communities. Crews like Spiral Tribe in London offered ‘everyone-welcome’ squat parties in warehouses and abandoned buildings as an alternative to the commercialisation of acid house and club culture of the time.
By 1992, the popularity of these illegal parties had grown, and the usually small-scale free festivals of the new age traveller movement were filling out with party-hungry Londoners; all of this culminated in the Castlemorton free festival in May 1992. This rave saw tens of thousands of punters swarming to the common and partying for seven days straight.
Castlemorton was the peak of the rave culture that had been growing in the warehouses and fields of the UK throughout the 80s, with sound systems from Nottingham, Wales, London, and Bristol coming together with traveller communities to party with some 35,000 people. In turn, this sparked a draconian response from the government.
The anarchy of Castlemorton was an opportunity for the newly elected conservative government to display their authority against the ‘moral degeneracy’ of the travellers and ravers, and appease the ‘respectable’ public and press who were appalled by the scenes of 35,000 people partying with no infrastructure for a week.
The government introduced the 1994 Criminal Justice Public Order Act, which criminalised previously civil offences. This new act targeted rave culture directly, with the criminalisation of ‘collective trespass’ and a direct mention of music with ‘repetitive beats’ being outlawed. It also criminalised and oppressed the traveller community, taking away rights from traveller sites, coupled with increased police stop and search powers and limited rights to protest.
The bill was accompanied with aggressive enforcement by the police; riot police were used to break up parties, London squats were aggressively shut down, and members of crews like Spiral Tribe were persecuted and arrested. The government was targeting what it saw as social degeneracy and vandalism, fuelled by a widespread ‘moral panic’ in reaction to the scene.
In the UK These measures after Castlemoreton pushed many crews and their sound systems into mainland Europe, where the development of Teknivals fully took off, leaving the free party scene in the UK relatively dormant.
Three decades on, festivals like Glastonbury and Boomtown - born out of free-party culture and aftermath of Castlemorton - are now mainstream commercialised events attended by hundreds of thousands, live-streamed on national television and, most importantly, often bought up by large corporations like Livenation.
Each year, smaller, more alternative festivals are forced to either accept massive investment (leading to ‘stacked’ line-ups and aggressive security teams) or simply shut for good.
Additionally, the strain on the night-life industry has never been more apparent, according to the Night Time Industries Association, the UK has lost 37% of its nightclubs since March 2020. Moreover, cuts to arts and culture funding have left the music and arts industries in disarray, with ‘grant-in-aid’ funding for UK arts and cultural organisations falling 18% between 2010 and 2023.
These problems are especially exacerbated for people in rural communities, where legal night-life activities are next to none.
For many, paying upwards of £200 for overcrowded, regulated, commercial festivals is no longer desired. What’s more, a lack of opportunity for young artists and creatives to make their mark on the industry means that the community-led anarchic spirit displayed at the Resonance 2025 Teknival offers a well-needed alternative for many.
Music, art and creativity will persist, and when deprived of opportunity, young people have consistently proved they will create their own- 'established' or otherwise.
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