“They were always so hell-bent on making this happen, no matter what,” a staffer stated as I walked past security and saw the first festival stages I'd seen in over two years.

A beautiful lake was near the main stage, and cocktail mixers in wellies offered soft drinks to punters on some hay bales. Soundbites from musicians and ecstatic audiences were wafted on the breeze.

This was Bigfoot event, and that was, along with Download, one of the first music festivals to happen following a two-year drought. It felt threatened at every moment of the springtime. Tension was so severe that a friend claimed four days before the event, "I won't believe it till I see it. I simply do not see how”.

I'd begun emailing, wondering when the anticipated cancellation would happen - but that never happened. This IRL event in the Warwickshire countryside was taking place because tier 3 allows events with less than 4,000 attendees if they adopt social distancing. They're just a logistical nuisance, as lower audience numbers make it much more difficult for festival organizers to generate profit. Furthermore, because there is no government-backed insurance, organizers risk losing millions if Boris Johnson executes a last-minute lockdown U-turn days just before the event.

Events must continue on a safe and accessible course. The spontaneity that festivals promote, and their cultural richness, is essential for people like me. Festivals are my lifeline, and many people feel similarly - that's why gatherings like these have been there for centuries. They are an important way of bringing people together to unwind, with the camping option eliminating the bother of missing last trains.

A getaway may drastically affect a new couple, and festivals can help develop deeper bonds in the same way. Once you have three days with friends instead of a few hours at dinner, it's simpler to get past the small chat and into the important conversations. At festivals, attendees experience the zeitgeisty joy of being "there." We are diverted from the mundane by the raucousness of punk bands and the intricate harmonies of church choruses.

I've formed my little community of festival buddies these days, folks I don't meet outside of events yet run into in rainy fields every summer. I've also met some of my closest friends in the fields. They are my safe haven, offering a brief, idealistic alternative to the local tribe I have at home.

And don't just take my advice for it: the significance of festivals extends far beyond personal experiences. At music festivals, ideas emerge and new music is found and introduced into the environment, resulting in the formation of tomorrow's greatest bands.  They are also hotbeds of experimenting in a variety of other surprising ways, like the development of new sustainable technologies (urine transformed to water, anyone?) and theatrical clichés seeking new ways to do Shakespeare.

I'd want to thank Bigfoot Festival for believing they might pull it off, for offering a blueprint for getting festivals fully up and running, and for delivering one of the weekends where I came closer to my pre-pandemic self.

But there's a greater problem than just me and my buddies: several events have been postponed this year since they lack the financial wherewithal to take Bigfoot's kind of risk. Concerning the financial crisis's impact on festivals, the Association of Independent Events stated that 93% of surviving UK festivals "may still theoretically go forward this summer — although not without insurance."

As with fringe theatres and grassroots music places the government must step in and assist. Festivals aren't only about music; they're also important lifelines for many of us to feel a connection, and a space for new cultural ideas to develop. They must be safeguarded.