Electromagnetic Field is only a couple of months away and this is the first of several updates to help you prepare. It’s a long one, so get a nice cup of tea and sit down.

We’ll be talking about this year’s badge (and what you need to do to get one), asking for your help with sponsorship, our Call for Participation, and what to do if you are organising a village.

The EMF badge for 2024 and beyond: Tildagon

Every EMF has featured a unique electronic badge, but from 2024 we’re taking a different approach.

Introducing the Tildagon: A reusable badge with modular parts upgraded at each event, and expansion slots to fill with your own creations. This is our badge for 2024 and beyond - we want you to bring it back in 2026!

An x-ray of the Tildagon, with hexpansions inserted in the right and bottom right slots, protruding out over the edge of the main PCB.

Until now every EMF badge has been entirely paid for by sponsorship, but for the first time we are introducing a small charge for the badge - we want to reduce the amount of unwanted electronics manufactured, and reduce our dependence on sponsors. The Tildagon will be reusable for multiple EMF events and future upgrades will be free.

The Tildagon costs £13 with a battery. We intentionally designed the badge to be compatible with the EMF 2016 and 2018 badge batteries, so you can also order one without a battery for £10 - we encourage you to do this if you can.

If you have an EMF ticket you can reserve your badge now.

In another break from tradition, our work-in-progress design repositories are already published and everything except the artwork will be public before the event. We’re also providing templates for people to make their own hexpansions and apps ahead of the festival.

You can find out more about the badge and making things for it in our blog post.

Can your company sponsor EMF 2024?

We’re finding it especially difficult to raise sponsorship this year, and we are still looking for companies and organisations who can help make EMF even better.

While your ticket pays for the basic infrastructure that makes EMF possible, sponsorship pays for many of the things that make EMF special - such as the free childcare, live transcription of talks, and funding for speakers, artists, peformers, and workshop facilitators who otherwise couldn’t attend.

Sponsoring EMF is a great opportunity to get in front of over 3,000 technical, creative people. Many attendees work in the technology industry, which is why previous EMFs have been sponsored by companies such as GitHub, Vonage, Farnell, and Mathworks.

Our sponsor page is a great resource to share with your company, containing information on the audience, opportunities, and price tiers.

While we have standard tiers it’s important to note that EMF is not a standard event, and we expect sponsors to be as creative as the attendees! If an existing tier doesn’t quite fit what you need, or you have grand ambitions around something like a workshop or a giant robot installation, please get in touch - we’d love to chat.

Do a thing!

Our Call for Participation is still open for talks, workshops, performances, and installations you’d like to bring.

The earlier you submit, the more likely you are to be accepted, and any accepted talks or workshops are guaranteed a voucher to buy tickets - so pass the news on to anyone didn’t manage to get a ticket in the public sale!

This year the EMF theme is “Solarpunk” and our Design team are looking for contributors and artists to help make the camp look fantastic.

We are looking for people to assist with:

  • Artwork and installations for the bar and lounge spaces
  • Sewing and fabricating site decorations
  • Sharing your plants, seeds, and nature technology at the Community Cultivation Compilation

If you’d like to help with any of these, or have ideas of your own, get in touch!

We have published a theme guide and invitation to build which contains further information, inspiration, graphics, and contact details.

Start a village

Villages at EMF bring together groups of friends, like-minded people, colleagues or even families camping together at EMF. It could be a group of people with a common interest like the maths village, your local hackspace, or just a way to share the cooking with some friends. You can learn more on our villages pages.

You can now register your village so that the Village People know you exist and get in touch to discuss any support you may need. You can see the villages already registered on the website.

We have a limited stock of marquees and furniture for rental to make a communal space for your village. They’re available from our hire page, and you don’t have to register as a village to be eligible. Please place your order by 1 May.

See you in the field!