How Boardmasters Is Empowering Young People Attending Their First Festival

In a festival-industry-first, Boardmasters festival took a bold step towards addressing vital issues surrounding consent, harnessing the power of education in partnership with The Schools Consent Project. 

Boardmasters festival is Cornwall’s own surf and music festival taking place every year across two beautiful sites in Newquay. With a young audience, the festival recognised a need to equip today’s young people with an insight and understanding of consent and what that means in the real world.

The partnership with The Schools Consent Project is funded by The Boardmasters Foundation and provides the opportunity for Cornwall’s young people to participate in a series of classroom-based workshops to tackle topics such as relationships, bystander intervention, alcohol consumption, and consent, equipping young people with the information they need before arriving on site. 

In a major step in the industry, the partnership is paving the way for more positive conversations. With our client at Boardmasters, we launched a PR campaign to showcase the importance of the initiative, garnering local press coverage on BBC South West, trade coverage including Access All Areas and Festival Insights, as well as a huge win when BBC News tweeted the online article garnering hundreds of thousands of views.

Recognising that the conversation should extend to parents and guardians, Boardmasters enlisted the help of It Happens Education to facilitate a series of webinars for parents and guardians to build their knowledge and increase their confidence when exploring these topics with the young people in their lives.

Boardmasters exemplifies its dedication to fostering positive change in live events, creating enjoyable environments and promoting a culture of respect and understanding among the festival’s young attendees. We’re incredibly proud to work with Boardmasters and are all excited to be a part of the journey as this initiative develops.