With only 6 weeks before we don boots and start wiring a field it’s time for another update.

There’s a lot of information in this email, so here’s the most important things:

  • If you want a badge, you should order one right now.
  • The festival site does not close until Monday at 1pm! There are things to do until late Sunday night.
  • Trains on Sunday will be affected by engineering works.
  • Ticket refunds are now open for those who can’t make it.
  • Merchandise is now available to pre-order.
  • The Call for Participation remains open until April 25th.
  • We urgently need to find more sponsors!

You can find infomation about all of these topics and more below.

Order your Tildagon badge ASAP!

We announced the Tildagon camp badge in a previous update and manufacturing begins this week.

This year we are introducing a small charge for the badge in order to make it more sustainable and reduce the number of unwanted badges produced. The badge is not essential for you to attend EMF, but we plan to reuse this badge at future events.

If you would like one, please make sure you reserve your badge as soon as possible. We may not be able to fulfil any orders placed after Tuesday 23rd.

Trains, Monday, cars & accessibility

We have a few critical pieces of information about getting to the festival, so please don’t skip this section.

If you are planning to leave site by train, be aware that on Sunday 2nd June there will be engineering work on the line between Worcester and Great Malvern. More details can be found on the National Rail website - on Sunday ‘trains’ departing Ledbury will actually be rail-replacement buses until 6pm.

On Sunday our shuttle buses will also run to Worcestershire Parkway station which is unaffected by the works. You can check out the provisional shuttle bus schedule on bus.emf.camp.

This is a good moment to make it clear that you don’t have to leave by the end of Sunday! EMF is still open on the morning of Monday 3rd, with things still going on until late on Sunday night. If your journey will be affected by the engineering work we recommend staying with us until Monday.

One of our lovely attendees has volunteered their Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle for lifts to Ledbury/Worcestershire Parkway train stations on Sunday & Monday morning. If this would be useful to you, please email us.

Finally, if you are arriving by car please make sure you’ve bought a parking ticket. If you are hoping to bring a live-in vehicle (campervan) please ensure you have a ticket for it too.

Final ticket sales/refunds

If you have tickets you no longer need you can transfer them to friends, or alternatively you can now request a refund, by going to the purchases page in your account.

From here you can transfer individual tickets to another person or click ‘request refund’ to select which tickets you wish to refund.

There will be a small number of returned tickets going on sale before the event. To prevent a stampede, we will be releasing small blocks of tickets throughout the day on Sunday May 5th rather than at a fixed time.

Call for participation

Our Call for Participation remains open until Thursday 25th April, and we’re still accepting talks, workshops, installations, and performances!

If you have friends still looking for tickets, all speakers/workshop presenters are guaranteed a ticket to the festival.

If you’re looking for inspiration, we’re still actively looking for:

  • Youth Workshops: We are still looking for workshops of all kinds aimed at the under-12s! Please submit them to the Youth Workshop CfP.
  • Live Music and DJs: We are actively looking for performers, bands, and DJs who would like to perform at EMF this year. If you are interested or know people who would be, point them at our performers CfP.
  • The Night Market: Once again we’ll be opening up the doors of Null Sector for a night market. If you have things to sell or display please fill in this form.
  • Short Films (5~15min): In addition to our programme of longer films in the evening, we’ll be running a 24/7 (well, 24/3) film screen for shorts. So if you have any (or know of any license-free) short films you’d like us to put on, please email films@emfcamp.org.
  • Games and arcade cabinets: This year our arcade is being taken over by playable things made by our community and other small or indie developers. If you’ve made a playable thing and would like to add it to the arcade, we’d love to hear from you! We are also putting out calls specifically for games that run on past EMF badges and ports of DOOM to unexpected objects. Please contact installations@emfcamp.org with your games, or any questions.

Volunteering

As we get closer to the event, the mountain of things we need to do in preparation grows. We’ve recently updated our page on volunteer roles, in case you’ve got some spare time and would like to help.

We’re also starting to look for people to help during set-up and tear-down: we have a lot of fence, chairs and tables to deploy (and then pack up again), so if you can come early or stay later please email volunteer@emfcamp.org. We really do need to know who’ll be on site before the event officially opens its gates, so as in previous years: if we have not confirmed that you are coming to help set up, we will not let you on site.

If you can only be around for the event itself but still want to help out, don’t worry, the volunteering system for shifts during the event will be going up soon.

If any of this sounds interesting, we have a dedicated mailing list for updates, as well as more information on our website.

Villages

Villages at EMF bring together groups of people to camp in the same area and do things together, and you can learn more on our villages pages. If you’d like to set up a village, please make sure to register your village so we can get in touch to discuss any support you may need.

You can see the villages already registered on the website - and if you’d like to join an existing village, you should be able to find contact details there.

We still have some marquees and furniture for rental to make a communal space for your village. They’re available from our hire page. Please place any orders by Wednesday 1st May.

First time camping

With a bit over five weeks until we’re pitching tents and hammering in pegs it’s probably a good time to make sure that you have everything you need.

Our wiki has a great page with a packing list and tips but as a summary:

  1. Pack for all weathers (hot & cold).
  2. Plan to walk a lot (good boots & blister plasters).
  3. Stay hydrated & well fed (you’ll be walking a lot).
  4. Aim to sleep well (ear plugs & a comfy bedroll).
  5. Know your limits and be kind to yourself (it’s ok to take a break).

Merch

We will once again be selling T-shirts and other merch from the shop. T-shirt pre-orders are live now.

As we mentioned previously, you can also order our badge, the Tildagon. If you want to know more, there’s an entire post on our blog. Get your pre-order in by 2pm Tuesday 23rd April to guarantee your badge.

And with that we’re done. Thank you so much for your support and we’ll see you in a field very soon!