vrije volk festival

Editions: 2018, 2019 & 2020 (partially)

vrije volk festival is Rotterdam’s only open-minded/queer electronic music festival. The intimate one day festival is a free space for queers, open-minded straights, friends of the community and music lovers. An inclusive experience is one of the festival’s key assets, for which vrije volk festival has previously collaborated with Now&Wow, Rotterdam Pride, Isabell Schulz and more trailblazers.

Nowadays, many (music) festivals pick a style that’s (almost) exclusively based on digital design. As vrije volk festival is an event for the people, the campaign style shows outspoken individuals who are not afraid to be themselves. That way, a feeling of trust is created with an audience that does still faces difficulties when expressing themselves in public. Meaningful storytelling is essential when performing in a niche corner like this.

In 2020, a special Eurovision Song Contest was supposed to take place on May 9th. To celebrate this special occasion, the team had taken the one step that stayed behind until then: launching a very explicit campaign with queer couples making out (see below). Unfortunately, we were not able to finish 2020’s vrije volk festival campaign, as the covid decided to step by, but these posters did hang all over the city of Rotterdam. I was expecting to see acts of vandalism on the materials, but surprisingly none appeared; Rotterdam turns out to be more queer friendly than I initially thought. Some great news :-).

Campaign pictures by Eric Zee
Festival pictures by Kim de Hoop, Jordy Brada & Rosa Quist