WITHOUT question, Boomtown Fair is the most anticipated event of the UK’s summer festival season. And rightly so. It’s exciting, experiential, theatrical and surprising. More akin to a futuristic sci-fi adventure at Westworld in which you participate as a character and can leave your inhibitions behind (minus evil psychopathic androids, thankfully).

Packed to the rafters with jaw-dropping production and a mind-boggling array of musical performances, DJ’s, bands, MCs, artists, poets, speakers, and hundreds of actors in character; Boomtown represents an unrivalled sensory experience, unlike any other festival in the country.

60,000 tickets sold out in less than two minutes six months ago. Over twenty-five main stages and 80 street venues can be explored. It’s essentially a city that sprawls across four areas and includes Lions Den, Old Town, Copper County, Paradise Heights, Whistlers Green, Kidz Town, Forest Parties, Sector Six, Dstrkt Five, Barrio Loco, Metropolis, Diss-Order Alley, Bang Hai Towers, Poco Loco, Earache Factory, Hangar 161, Hotel Paradiso, Old Town Square, Crazy Calamites, Psychedelic Forest, Tangled Routes and Tribe of Frog.

With interactive theatre, a highly diverse soundtrack and an overarching storyline at its core, Boomtown combines all the music we love with theatre, interactive set design, freedom and escapism.

The organisers are very big on respect too, “One of the main things we’ve learnt over the past 10 chapters of Boomtown is just how far consideration and respect for one another can go. We really want to encourage a culture of respect by providing as many resources for our public as possible, in the hope this encourages everyone within the festival to pass this respect on, to themselves, to each other, to the festival, but also to the outside wider world in general. We’re laying the foundations on what we want the festival to stand for and represent, and where we see our future direction to be focused fully upon.” The Boomtown Organisers said.

But it’s not just the production, respect focus and programme that stand out; Boomtown has a story that started ten years ago, in which every festival reveller can play a part. This year, Chapter 10, is called The Machine Cannot Be Stopped. Here’s a snippet from the year’s latest instalment…

Last year the rise of Bang Hai Industries (BHI) seemed unstoppable, but not everyone was sold on this new hi-tech vision of the future. A Hacker group challenged the dominance of BHI exposing corruption behind the shiny façade. In a climactic finale the BHI security systems were breached and for a moment the mighty corporate empire seemed like it may too be toppled and fall. A provocative message was delivered across the multiple channels of Bang Hai Entertainment's digital network but moments later the system rebooted locking the Hackers out once more showing that Bang Hai Security is ready to do whatever it has to in order to protect its interests, to create a system that cannot be breached, a machine that cannot be stopped!

This year the focus is on Bang Hai Technologies leading character A.M.I. (Artificial Machine Intelligence). Citizens are encouraged to ask A.M.I. their question in the hope that it will be answered at A.M.Is official launch, in the process giving BHI all their data to manipulate as BHI sees fit. All the while the hackers continue to try to breach the BHI system in a bid to Stop The Machine! Once they successfully hack into the backend of AMI, obtaining contact details for all those who have asked their question to AMI they issue them the ‘hackers tool kit’ to encourage more citizens to help collect the Secret 6 documents that are hidden around the city to expose Bang Hai for what it really is, whilst also finally getting to the bottom of who is the man behind the mask…

If you’re lucky enough to be at Boomtown this year and be part of its extraordinary narrative, a world of unity, creativity and freedom awaits you. www.boomtownfair.co.uk