Wilderness 2023 review: a volunteer’s experience
Wilderness is one of many festivals in the varied summer festival schedule in the UK.
I attended in 2023 for the first time and figured I’d share my thoughts on the festival with you. That way, you can get a better idea of what Wilderness is like, if you’re thinking of attending yourself in a future year!
Just to note, as with most of the festivals I go to, I attended Wilderness as a steward with Oxfam. It’s a great way to attend festivals; however, as I didn’t camp in the general campsites, my feelings may be different to a punter.
Ratings
Music: 2/5 • Activities: 5/5 • Audience & atmosphere: 4/5 • Site: 3/5 • Accessibility: 4/5 • Facilities: 5/5 • Value: 2/5 • Volunteer experience: 3/5 • Overall: 3.5/5
About Wilderness
Wilderness is a music and arts festival held in Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire, every year. It’s been around since 2011, when it replaced Cornbury Festival at the site.
Whilst Wilderness is a music festival, there’s a strong emphasis on other activities and experiences, with less emphasis on the line up or attracting big headliners. Instead, you’ll find boutique catering, small classes and crafts, talks, bookshops and small bars.
Wilderness is a pretty small festival, with around a 10,000 capacity. However, the arena feels big for such a small number and there’s a high number of activities on offer.
A note on volunteering
I attended Wilderness as a volunteer with Oxfam. The volunteering aspect definitely affected how I felt about the rest of the festival, and therefore I’ll also be discussing the volunteer experience as part of this article.
To give you a brief overview of festival volunteering with Oxfam, it works like this: in return for three eight hour shifts, volunteer stewards get free access to the festival, meal vouchers and a separate campsite with showers, hot water and electricity for phone chargers. It’s a great system full of friendly people and I’ve really enjoyed the festivals I’ve attended with them so far.
I’ll talk about how volunteering at Wilderness compares to other Oxfam festivals later on, in case you’re interested! If you want to know more about how to get involved, you can also check out my guide to volunteering at festivals with Oxfam.
What is Wilderness normally like?
Wilderness bills itself as a festival focussed on experiences, with arts, music, workshops and wellness all coming to play. Therefore, instead of a name-heavy line up you’ll find a range of different activities. Some of these aspects are quite peculiar but present every year, so, although they are new to me, they are definitely not to the regulars!
Cornbury Park is home to a river dammed in several places, producing several lakes in the valley. These can be swum in, and you can take a rowing boat onto the lakes as well.
Music is normally very variable in flavour, but you’re more likely to see orchestral and brass bands compared to other more mainstream festivals. The late night spot is The Valley – literally, a steep sided valley with a stage at the bottom, from which a DJ can play drum and bass until 4 am.
Another weird and wonderful attraction is the Playing Fields, an area of the arena where they do slightly bizarre sport-based activities. The Playing Fields are well known for their naked cricket with streakers. Whilst I was there, they did the most bizarre people-based Grand National with people. It’s so strange to see fully fledged adults racing onto the pitch to do the hokey pokey!
Food and drink at Wilderness
Wilderness is known for its food and drink scene, which can’t be described as anything other than premium.
There are a number of venues – namely, Long Table Banquets, the Wilderness Kitchen and the Chef’s Table – which offer tasting menus, often with interesting themes and guest chefs. One I thought sounded interesting was the Bloodshot Supper Club, which offered a fine dining experience with entertainment and music after the headliner on the last night: different if nothing else!
You will of course also find typical festival food trucks and vendors, although like most festivals these tend to be expensive. Compared to other festivals the food offers is more boutique – no cheap burgers and chips here!
There’s also a range of bars. Notably, there’s a lot of bars from premium drinks vendors. Grey Goose Vodka, Patron Tequila, Veuve Clicquot, Castillo de Ibiza and Lillet all had bars in the festival.
As you might expect from the names, Wilderness caters to a fairly wealthy audience. Boutique options are popular and the boutique campsite was the same size as the general one!
Weather at Wilderness 2023
As with all festivals, my experience was heavily influenced by the weather. This year there was a lot of rain, particularly on the Wednesday before the festival and on the Saturday.
Unsurprisingly, the crew and general campsites became very muddy. The main arena fared better but still had a lot of mud in the main walkways. The rain wasn’t very motivating and on the Saturday I resembled a hiker more than a festival-goer with my wellies, waterproof trousers and jacket! After attending my previous festivals during dry weather, this was quite a different experience.
Still, we pushed through the weather; we had to, after all!
Wilderness 2023: the various aspects
To summarise my experience, I’ve rated Wilderness 2023 in a bunch of categories, which I have summarised below:
- Music: 2/5
- Activities: 5/5
- Audience and atmosphere: 4/5
- Site: 3/5
- Accessibility: 4/5
- Facilities: 5/5
- Value for money: 2/5
- Volunteer experience: 3/5
Overall score: 3.5/5 (excluding volunteer experience)
If you attended Wilderness in 2023, let me know if you agree with these ratings! I go into each part of the festival below.
Music: 2/5
As a festival that’s not designed to have big headliners, I didn’t expect an amazing lineup.
However, I was a bit confused by the artists that performed at Wilderness. The headliners were The Chemical Brothers, Christine & The Queens and Fatboy Slim. The Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim are both electronic DJs which occupy similar musical space. For a family-friendly festival with no particular musical focus, it seemed a bit strange to have two electronic rave acts as the headliners.
Still, Christine & The Queens did a phenomenal performance which was closer to art than it was to music – although, as he put on a fairly conceptual show and did not include the main hits, I’m sure it wasn’t appreciated by all. We also enjoyed some of the smaller acts, most notably The Untold Orchestra’s Beyonce through the ages show.
It’s also worth noting that the people attending the festival were not music oriented at all. We got the barrier for Christine & The Queens and the Sugababes with minimal effort, which just wouldn’t be possible at a bigger festival. This makes it a great festival to come to if you’re a massive fan of one of the headliners, as you can secure a great spot!
Activities: 5/5
Wilderness excels at activities. There was so much on offer: fine dining, wild swimming and rowing on the lakes, yoga, craft workshops, talks and debates, to name a few.
One we loved in particular was the Poetry Takeaway. You give them ideas for a poem and, after 30 minutes, they write a poem for you. We were so impressed by the poems they wrote for us! They also had a choir, which punters could join for rehearsals and a performance on the Sunday.
We were in awe of the drone display put on for Saturday night. In particular, I loved the displays showing the leaping frog and phoenix.
There were a couple of problems which apply exclusively to volunteers. Many of the activities required pre-booking and sold out before the festival, even the free ones. Oxfam stewards don’t receive their shifts until they arrive the day before the festival begins, so it’s just not possible to book these. Several activities also offered walk-in slots but it was a complete lottery as to which had these available.
Also, we found that a lot of the activities were pricey. Classes such as yoga, which are often free at other music festivals, cost money – and more than I’d be prepared to spend normally! However, if you’ve prepared and budgeted for the festival beforehand, I wouldn’t consider this a major issue for punters.
Audience and atmosphere: 4/5
We liked the audience at Wilderness 2023. It was a bit younger than we expected, with a lot of people in their twenties and thirties, and there were also many families.
Given the many expensive activities and dining at the festival, we weren’t surprised to find that some people felt affluent, and so many times we felt out of place. However, crowd etiquette was great and we found most people to be friendly and polite.
Site: 3/5
The arena at Wilderness is spacious and is similar in size to festivals with a larger capacity (although pretty hilly!). We were surprised by how much space there was to just breathe, and we got stuck in hardly any crowd crushes.
However, one thing that struck us (and maybe it’s just because we were working around the site) was how poor sign posting is. Outside the arena, it’s impossible to find anything.
It’s also not possible to get from one side of the site to the other on foot without going through the arena, which presented problems for some punters trying to get to their campsite. Whilst there was a shuttle bus, this finished at 10 pm, which posed a problem for some festival goers.
Accessibility: 4/5
Generally, Wilderness is very accessible. As expected for a major festival, they’ve got accessibility platforms, level access and accessible camping.
One thing I liked in particular was their support for BSL speakers. There was a stand offering BSL translators, and at the Wilderness Stage there was a BSL translator translating the lyrics to the songs. It was pretty amazing to watch!
However, the arena is quite hilly, which might produce some obstacles for people with limited mobility.
Facilities: 5/5
One area Wilderness particularly excelled at was the toilets. The portaloos were almost always clean and only on one occasion was there no loo roll. Plus, there were enough of them that most of the time you didn’t have to queue.
We also loved the presence of female urinals throughout the arena, which helped prevent queuing and kept up hygiene.
A nice touch for the punters is the presence of shower blocks in the general camping, keeping hygiene levels up for everyone!
Value for money: 2/5
There’s no getting past it: Wilderness is an expensive festival. Whilst the base ticket is average for a weekend festival, the activities add up and it’d be impossible to keep yourself occupied for three whole days without one or two pre-booked activities in your schedule. We didn’t feel like the line-up was good enough to justify the ticket price either.
Another thing I wasn’t keen on was that punters could only bring limited alcohol into the campsites and none into the arena: a classic money grab! It was possible to smuggle alcohol into the arena though.
Overall: 3.5/5
Volunteer experience: 3/5
How does volunteering with Oxfam at Wilderness compare to other Oxfam festivals?
My personal experience was relatively good. I got early shifts over Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights, meaning I had all of Saturday and Sunday to explore! The meal tokens given to the Oxfam stewards also meant we had some delicious meals inside the arena.
However, the staff camping wasn’t great and is the only festival I’ve done where staff camping was worse than general. Until Thursday there were barely any toilets for the whole of staff camping, and these weren’t maintained. Later, the Oxfam campsite did receive their own toilets, but until then there was a lot of queuing and holding our nose!
The age range for volunteers was higher than a normal Oxfam festival, and getting accredited looked a bit painful.
For an Oxfam festival, the Oxfield (that’s that the Oxfam campsite is called) was also not that social. I think this is because the marquee didn’t have any chairs or table, so socialising didn’t really happen. Therefore, we only made one friend. As Lou and I didn’t know anyone else attending the festival, we’d hoped to make more friends than we did, but it wasn’t possible outside of our shifts.
Wilderness 2023: summarising the experience
Did I enjoy Wilderness? Absolutely.
However, I probably wouldn’t be back. My favourite part of a festival is the music, and this was lacking. With many of the activities being paid for and pre-booked only, I wasn’t able to take part in some of the best parts of the festival, and at points we ran out of stuff to do.
You never know, though. With how easy it was to get to the front of the crowds for the music, if a good headliner comes along I might just be back!
If you liked this, check out my 2023 reviews for Boardmasters and Reading. And take a look at my guide to Oxfam festival volunteering!
