Everyone’s Invited: Dockyard Festival on 10 Years

Founded by couple Coen van Dongen and Tania Davison, the festival has been forced to adapt and evolve since its origins.

However, now in its tenth year, the festival has managed to find a sweet spot, sparking interest from a fresh faced generation of attendees alongside those who have been dancing since the beginning.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of Dockyard Festival is in respect to its date in the wider calendar.

Run in Amsterdam during the iconic ADE music event, those who visit the city certainly aren’t spoilt for choice and some might see the potential for clashing agendas as a step too far. However, Coen and Tania feel that this might be their key strength as Coen explains.

“It was a big risk for us as an organisation, nobody really believed in it and people thought that we were crazy. For the first edition we applied for a licence for 10,000 people but then started to realise that maybe this was a bad idea and so we opted for 5,000. It sold out two weeks before and that was our proof of concept.

People wanted to party during the day, it was a completely different business case from ADE. I remember talking to my niece who’s not from Amsterdam who described how she was fed up with the hustle of getting home from club nights and parties and how she would love to have normal festival hours. I spoke to some other friends who were really enthusiastic about it and that was that.

ADE is like a magnet for music lovers from around the world, people come from all over Holland and all the surrounding countries so it just made sense to us.”

Dance music and club culture has always been a big part of the couples personal life. Albeit changing circumstances and age catches up with us all. Coen reflects on what brought the two together.

“Dockyard is reflective of our taste as a couple. Sometimes we branch out and book artists which we are less familiar with but we both really like techno. On our second date we went to a techno party together. We grew up going to techno parties back in the day, there were a lot of illegal or semi illegal parties which everybody went to and we were there like every weekend just surrounded by techno music. This is in our DNA.”
Times have changed for the couple to some extent but they make it clear to explain that they still very much attend parties when the time is right. In all honesty times have changed more broadly for the culture and the nature of the dancefloor as a whole.

Fast paced, high energy club anthems are having a moment and that’s perhaps reflective of the nature of the audience and their current attention span. This is something which isn’t lost on the pair when programming the event.

Tania discusses changing audience behaviours.

“Younger audiences have a shorter attention span and we’ve had to change the way in which we market. The older audience which we’ve held for the past fifteen years or so remains what it was but kids definitely go to festivals less and less. There’s been a shift in the market and a lot of this new wave of people have a shorter attention span as a result of time spent on social media as they’ve grown up.”

She also reflects on the nature of the audience that attend Dockyard, making sure to emphasise the variety and diversity of the crowd which she feels is essential not only for the nature of the party but more broadly across dance music culture as a whole.

“We want everyone. Alternatives, preppies – everyone is welcome. Nobody is looking at anyone else, nobody is judging anybody else. We want the brightly coloured girls in the glitter next to the serious technically dressed people all in black. We want them next to each other. We want them dancing, for us that is what techno should be.”

Accessibility underpins Dockyard as a whole, as Coen dissects the musical policy.

“We don’t have a door policy. This isn’t what techno should be about. Everyone is welcome and one thing which we find really important is to ensure that the music isn’t ‘too difficult’. We want people to be able to dance and understand, it should be accessible to everyone.”

This idea of inclusivity and open arms is a bold approach in a city which can be closed minded with preconceived notions of genre and taste. However, beyond this holding such an ideology can also be challenging for the establishment and infrastructure of Amsterdam as a whole.

Amsterdam has seen a lot of change in recent years with the government clamping down more strictly on festivals, clubs and parties. It’s becoming increasingly more difficult to operate as a promoter in the city and this is because to an extent the culture has yet to be fully embraced and recognised by those in charge.

Coen unpicks the situation on the ground.

“Night culture in Amsterdam is struggling. It has a lot to do with demographics of course with less people going to clubs but a lot of it is also as a result of government policy and the rules which they come up with. They make it really difficult for clubs and festivals to exist and I’d say that Amsterdam has some of the strictest rules in terms of sound, sustainability and safety which really impacts the local scene.

There are some politicians who see the value of our industry and that is becoming more common. However there are still a small group of people with a hard, loud voice which complain and don’t want a festival in their backyard. Governments don’t like it when people complain and then you end up in a situation where festivals become restricted even more.

There’s been so many locations and venues which have disappeared and it worries me, it wears me out.”

All of this makes it perhaps even more impressive that Dockyard has become and maintained its presence as the festival that it is. Ten years is a remarkable achievement for an event which was always up against the odds and has since proven itself to have been a bold justification for daytime clubbing in the capital – even in October.

With just under twenty days to go they will play host to the likes of Cera Khin, Kölsch, Dj Gigola, Effy, LB AKA Labat and more on the 19th of October and there is a real sense of meaning and purpose behind a festival which is by the people and for the people of Amsterdam and beyond.