In Pictures: Boomtown 2014

Earlier in the summer Thisyearinmusic and Jack Smith launched our inaugural In Pictures series. A new R$N feature that charts a timeline of events in pictures via a number of given mediums. You may not have been able to get to the event or you may have rather just sat at home in your pants… but you need to know what's going on so with this we're giving you a window onto another world and another moment in time.

Now they're tackling Boomtown Fair 2014… here's what they had to say about the festival: 

I hope our gallery in some way categorises what was ultimately a distinctly un-categorisable festival. It was just one whole heap of crazy. A typical stroll may include any or all of the following: impromptu super-soaker fights; ten foot policemen on stilts out on patrol; being dragged into a room the size of a disabled toilet for an impromptu rave; political protests; migrating tents; table tennis; drumming workshop; burlesque; facial caricatures; flock of four-post beds; handmade pottery sold by children. It's clear that BoomTown is continuing to expand far beyond the intimacy of its humble origins. And by this year's standards mutterings of a regression towards 'quantity over quality' are wearing thin. The attention to detail spread across the festival's entirety is compelling: take the Demon Barber's workshop, or the working phone booth in Uptown, or Old Town's pirate ship stage, or the aforementioned secret rave as one of many instances of the craft and effort involved in keeping BoomTown 'alive'. To re-use the popular saying 'there is something for everyone' would do the festival a huge disservice – something for everyone, and then some.