Hosting a mass festival right after the last email has been sent for A-Level and GSCE results will almost always never end well.

With it’s adolescent overhaul, the severe lack of adulting present and the very first time youths are separated from their parents, the annual Reading + Leeds Festival has always had a stigma; a sour smell that deepens into the marshy grasslands on-site. With the reported death of teenager David Celino last year, drug busts also doubled at Leeds Fest this year – after Festival Republic were under sheer scrutiny if young people were safe at all for attending large festivals.

For many though, it’s kept up appearances for the most part – with R+L being many music enthusiasts and avid festival-goers their first taste of getting pissed and partially deaf in a field. Also for many, the weekend can be a remarkably enjoyable time, shared with firm friends before you indefinitely depart ways after school life and “young adulting” officially begins. With many of these festivals, trouble will only find you if you go looking for the drug boiling brews yourself.

But we saw something something majorly disconcerting this year from those who went. We actually saw a major drop-off from those attendee-numbers this year: camping areas were somewhat desolate, with empty patches of grass more frequent than ever. Does this play into the lineup over the years weakening in strength, as they desert their rock roots and tred a more worn-out path to indie and pop? Or is the drop-off down to the fact that young teens are growing older, there’s far more appealing festivals on the market than old Reading + Leeds and less and less teens are being drawn into the lights of such a festival? After all, Reading + Leeds is very much a festival catered to one specific age group. Amongst the anomalies, this age group tradition is kept up year-in, year-out. If that’s your main target audience resulting in achieving more than break-even each year, why bother changing it now?

Not to mention the graveyard of waste, tents and mess that was left before them after the weekend. With fellow festivals like Glastonbury, Boardmasters and 51st Festival advocating strong opinions on pollution control, sustainability and climate change. With a feeding frenzy of the ‘younger generation’ and teens alike part of these same campaigns, you would have certainly thought that they would have stuck to their principles, even when on a sleuthing getaway from their parents. With hypocrisy not diluting their intoxications one bit, it seems we still have to lot to learn on the festival front.

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Can young people be trusted to attend larger-scale festivals? More to the point, are they safe at all, or are we just doomed to repeat history? Or should we just relax and let the kids have fun?

After last years’ aftermath, the festival was under the microscope more than ever this year. Thankfully, with the hardened drug questioning we had on-site this year, there is no news of increased fatality on the death counter for the Republic guys; but it still needs to be addressed at great lengths.