6 Music - Music News

It was a good night for independent festivals as they took the majority of the awards at this year's UK Festival Awards held in London last night (15 Nov).

The annual ceremony is in it's eighth year and sees awards ranging from Best Headliner to Anthem of The Summer and even Best Toilet.

The Best Festival category is split into three - Major, Medium and Small and are decided by a panel of journalists and reviewers.

After a truimphant year before their break ,it was Glastonbury who took home Best Major.

There was no sign of the Eavis' though, it was the Director of Sponorship and Marketing, Robert Richards who accepted the award.

He told 6 Music why he thought it had been such a successful year:

"Michael always tried to make the last festival before the fallow year a particularly special one."

" I think you can't take out of the equation the line up we had, not just on the Pyramid Stage, which was phenomenal , but across the board I think we had some incredible acts play," he explained.

Secret Garden Party, which celebrated it's tenth anniversary this year, won the 'Medium-sized Festival.'

Jim Whewell is one of the directors of Secret Productions who run Secret Garden Party and was gobsmacked:

"It is really really amazing, we scooped the award for small festival in 2008, so now we are a little bit bigger, a little bit wilder so it's good to win in 2011.

End of The Road festival, which takes place in Dorset right at the end of the season in September ,was named Best Small Festival.

This year with Joanna Newsom, Wild Beasts and Mogwai on the line-up, they were the second festival to sell out after Glastonbury.  

Organiser Simon Tuffe says it is the line-up which makes his festival so popular:

"It is nice to go from a point of chasing everyone in the world to play your festival to getting to the point where bands are calling you to play."

"It's a compliment it shows what we have achieved," he added.

Festival Goers love Bestival

Bestival was voted Fans Favourite Festival after it's stellar line up of headliners The Cure and Bjork.

Rob Da Bank was there to pick it up and was suitably chuffed:

"I really do not care about awards but it is lovely to win Fans Favourite and hand on my heart ,we had so many people come back to us this year saying this was the Best Bestival they had been to and the Best Festival they had been to, so I was really really pleased."

Other winners included Ed Sheeran for Best Breakthrough Act following debut performances at Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds and Bestival.

Chase and Status won Anthem of The Summer for their track Blind Faith.

Paolo Nutini was named Headline Performance of the Year for his set at Latitude voted for by the fans.

He was slightly bemused by it: "I don't know how I got that, I seen most of them (other headliners) I am not going to argue with it there must be someone smiling on us anyway."

Meanwhile Sonisphere's line up of the Big Four - Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth plus Biffy Clyro and Slipknot was named the best line-up of the summer.

Best New Festival went to Wilderness while  Beautiful Days were named Best Family Festival.

Best Dance Event went to Creamfields, while Croatia's Outlook was honoured with Best Overseas Festival ad Sheffield's Tramlines beat The Great Escape, Dot to Dot and Gaymer's Camden Crawl to win Best Metropolitan Festival.

The Festival is only in it's third year and organiser James O'Hara told 6 Music this award might prove to be more than just a pat on the back:

"I think the surprise is that we are a free festival and I honestly think this award will actually help us survive.

"That might sound kind of a fairly large thing to say but I think the fact we are free and we survive on sponsors money, help from Sheffield Council and obviously all the enthusiasm from people within Sheffield who attend it, I think this will help it survive as it kind of does run on a shoestring.