The First: Balter Festival

Name: Balter Festival

Year started: 2014

Original capacity: 800

Original location: Baskerville Hall, Hay-on-Wye, Wales

First lineup: The Destroyers, Flava D, Spongebob Squarewave, Dutty Moonshine

For fans of: Care-free raving, underground music and joyous self-expression

“Sometimes, you look back on things in the early years and can’t quite believe we got away with it,” begins Balter Festival co-founder Elias Cole. For eleven years, the festival combined underground music with weirdness and eccentricity to create one of the UK’s most unique parties.

With ‘The First’, Skiddle is travelling back in time to the very first edition of some of the most beloved UK festivals, in an effort to capture the spark that propelled them into the hearts of ravers and moshers alike. In the case of Balter, two like-minded individuals came together in Elias Cole and Chris Aplin, who met at university. Both were involved in Bristol's free party/rave scene; Cole had been a DJ, and Aplin was a sound engineer, with both of them having experience in putting on events before. 

After a lot of “late-night talks,” the pair decided to put on a festival, confident that they had the contacts to make it work with all of their experience in the local scene. They wanted to create something that would represent them. “To be honest, the first year was 95% people I knew or people I liked, fortunately, we sold enough tickets through other people who like the same kind of weird music,” Cole says. 

Finding a name for the festival was an early stumbling block, which had them resorting to googling random names. Eventually, Balter stuck out with its definition being, “to dance with enthusiasm, but very little art or skill”. A common practice amongst a large percentage of festival-goers. “That’s what you do at a good festival, have loads of fun dancing even though you’re not very good at it. It just clicks and works.”

Balter - "To dance with enthusiasm, but very little art or skill".

When it came to promotion for the first Balter, around twelve years ago, flyering was still the go-to DIY method for them to advertise the new festival. “I would wake up at five in the morning to get flyering at six outside clubs in Bristol. We would print posters, one of the biggest we could print was cheap and we’d attach crappy old pieces of plywood that we found lying around and put them on roundabouts around Bristol, they’d usually last about a week. I can’t imagine they sold a single ticket.”

Any makeshift flyers spotted around Bristol would have been directing you to Baskerville Hall near Hay-on-Wye in Wales. The first site for Balter was an old manor house, you can imagine the finery and grandeur of the place. Now, ravers were unleashed upon it, with some rooms converted into stages and the larger outdoor area featuring the main stage. One of those rooms was the disco stage, a tiny space playing 80s disco and cheesy bangers, which would become a mainstay in future iterations of Balter.

A few areas from the first edition have remained throughout the festival’s history. “With the jigsore stage, the name came from the sound system that Chris used to own. Now, that’s one of our main stages. The Hex wasn’t called The Hex in our first year, but there’s a stage very similar to it, and Kirk who came to run it still does for us eleven years later. There are definitely a lot of aspects of that first year still going.”

One of the most striking parts of Balter Festival is the artwork that accompanies their lineups and other promotional materials, such as the programmes. You’ll find a plethora of characters dotted around who look like they’ve been ripped straight from a comic book of Baler lore. That’s alongside drawings of spaceships, animals and strange amalgamations of colour mashed together. They’ve all been designed by the same artist, Jak MCS, a friend of the founders who dedicates time each year to helping bring Balter to life. “There was no question he would be doing the art. He did the very first flyer, and the idea of giving people a piece of art along with the lineup started from that.”

In terms of the booking policy at Balter, Cole had a simple yet effective mantra for the artists that they book. “We have always wanted people to come because they know there’ll be music that they’ll like even if they don’t know half of the lineup.” One of the earliest artists they were determined to book was The Destroyers, a gypsy-folk collective who typified the madness that surrounds Balter. “We grew up watching bands at festivals like The Destroyers and we brought them in for the first Balter, and now they’re coming back for this year, so it's come full circle.”

The point of Balter is to let loose and have fun. A space to embody your weirdest impulses to the fullest. Having this sense of freedom brings people together, and a sense of community at the festival was felt from the off. “So many of the people that came the first time were friends of friends from the Southwest scene. There’s always been this community feel, as it has grown, we’ve done all the advertising, but I think most of it has been word of mouth. There are people who came eleven years ago who are still going or involved one way or another.”

There are certain happenings from the first edition that we can’t print. Let's just say that there have been some strange occurrences at Balter from the start. “I think after eleven years of seeing a lot of nutters and people sock fighting in a pool of super noodles, it almost becomes normalised.” The madness surrounding Balter is a key part of what makes it stand out amongst other UK festivals. 

"I think after eleven years of seeing a lot of nutters and people sock fighting in a pool of super noodles, it almost becomes normalised".

It can’t be ignored that 2025 marks the final year of Balter Festival. After eleven years of operating, the current festival climate looks completely different. Post-Covid expenses have risen sharply for festivals, with independents feeling the brunt of price spikes. The current cost of living crisis also sees people with less disposable income, meaning that niche festivals may not get prioritised over larger festival experiences. It isn’t uncommon to see festivals announce closures before they’ve had a chance to properly say goodbye, but Balter takes solace from the fact that they’re going out on their own terms.

“If you told me twelve years ago that we’d still be doing this in eleven years, I’d be like ‘yeah right’. We’re really happy we managed to do it for so long, there have been struggles financially, but we survived and we’re able to control the narrative and go out on a high in our final year,” Cole says. In Balter’s first year, 800 people attended, and whilst it may have changed location, the festival has stayed as true as possible to its roots. A festival for the underground, for people who wanted to embrace craziness, that small community of 800 has grown into thousands of like-minded ravers, tempted by the promise of a good time.

What made Balter Festival what it is today? “Without a doubt, the people make the event so good. We provide a space, provide a platform for people and book the artists, but the fun that people have is from everyone around them.”

The final edition of Balter Festival takes place from Thursday 22nd to Sunday 25th May. They’ll be going out with a bang, and you can book your tickets at the bottom of the page.

For more festivals from across the UK, head to our Festivals page. 

Check out our What's On Guide to discover even more rowdy raves and sweaty gigs taking place over the coming weeks and months. For festivals, lifestyle events and more, head on over to our Things To Do page or be inspired by the event selections on our Inspire Me page.

Tickets are no longer available for this event