Review : Playground Festival 2021

Thoughts on this year’s festival in Rouken Glen Park

We’ve just about recovered from Playground Festival 2021. After a 2 year break, there was a lot of pressure and expectation.

Friday seemed to be dogged by long queues and internet problems topping up the wristbands (intended to keep the festival cash-free), experienced by ourselves as well. We missed James due to being in the VIP bar queue for a full hour

. Queue times thankfully improved by Sunday when we returned and most waiting times were limited to 5 minutes at most. The only issue on the Sunday was the constant rain, which obviously can’t be controlled.

Internet and queues aside, the site embraced the leafy Rouken Glen Park. Seating was spread around the site, a lot were covered which came in handy with the Glasgow weather!

Hidden Lane Brewery were the stars of the show for us. Apart from their delish brews – special shout out for the raspberry saison – service was friendly and quick at their brewery container, which served 5 different organic beers over the 3 festival days.

Cheers!

Macy Gray was just as we expected, a little bit crazy and sweary with superb crowd interaction and an interesting choice of songs which included the Golden Girls theme and Creep by Radiohead!

Other highlights were Orbital, Martha Reeves & The Vandellas, The Forest Stage and the main man Nile Rodgers.

Orbital

The Chill Hill

Forest Stage

There was also spontaneous acrobatics

The VIP section had covered tenting with both indoor and outdoor seating, with benches and comfy sofas.

The main bar within the VIP tent served Hidden Lane Beer, Hawke’s cider (Brewdog), gin, rum, Jack Daniels, wine and Prosecco. There was also a separate Panther Milk bar outside, which was in demand.

The VIP section also had its own covered DJ area, which was a great idea…but it also meant you couldn’t chill here whilst listening to the main stage if you wanted a break from standing around.

Food-wise, we think the selection outside the VIP was better than inside. Special shout out for Mac Love, Brigston hotdogs and Dough Man’s Land pizza.

Would we go back? Yes. Yes, it was crazy and there are issues to be sorted out but overall it was great fun with superb music so we hope to return for Playground 2022.

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