Secret Garden Party concludes final event with spectacle
Last Saturday (27 July), Secret Garden Party’s 2024 Roots edition delivered a show intended to celebrate its legacy as one of the UK’s leading independent festivals at its location in the countryside near Huntingdon.
After 25 years, the Secret Garden Party (SGP) announced to festival-goers that this would be its final year in its current guise, marking the end of an era.
The show culminated in a state-of-the-art drone show, designed by Celestial in collaboration with SGP, a creative production of founder Fred Fellowes and Secret Design’s Nick Carter, titled ‘Creativity Unchained’.
This was followed by a ‘That’s Showbiz, Baby’ extravaganza, produced by SGP in collaboration with Acme FX and Immersive International.
The show peaked with the symbolic ‘Burning of the Main Stage’, a call for immediate change, signifying that from the ashes, something new will grow in the garden.
Fred Fellowes, head gardener and festival founder, said: “At this point, we’ve said everything that needs to be said.
“We’ve done what we said we would do. That’s the party we created, and that speaks for itself.”
The curated 2024 line-up at the festival, which ran from 25-28 July, featured more than 350 artists, including Unkle, Crystal Fighters, Chinchilla, Franky Wah, Carly Wilford, Adelphi Music Factory, Jakkob, Omega Nebula, and TechnoBrass, together with independent collectives Chai Wallahs, The Living Room, and more.
In previous years, Secret Garden Party has hosted the likes of Lily Allen, Ed Sheeran, and Dua Lipa, while also playing a role in breaking the careers of Florence & the Machine, The xx, and Regina Spektor, whose first festival appearance was at SGP.
[Read more: As The Libertines head to the Secret Garden Party 2023, Carl Barât tells of ‘brotherhood’ feeling]
Keep up to date with developments at linkin.bio/thesecretgardenparty.