On the first night of the four-day Welcome to the Village festival in Leeuwarden, the municipality made the event organisers turn down the volume.
Translation by Traci White
The innovative festival, which has been held at De Groene Ster in Leeuwarden since 2013, reportedly violated local noise ordinances. The Leeuwarder Courant reports that the festival’s organisers were stunned by the municipality’s intervention. “The noise levels were apparently exceeded by just the crowd cheering. We don’t understand this at all.”
The speaker system at the festival was just turned off temporarily at first, but Welcome to the Village ultimately had to pull the plug on the entire night time programme. The organisers disagreed with the decision, but they say they had no choice but to comply. “Otherwise, we would have had to pay a ridiculously big fine.”
The acts taking the stage on Thursday night were Mozes and the Firstborn, Warhola, Melange, Yuri Veerman, Sven Hammond, DJ Ingo the Gringo and DJ Ed Rock. But even without any musical acts on the microphone, the festival was still reportedly too loud overnight. The noise ordinances are apparently not an issue during the day: the festival kicked off again on Friday morning at 11 a.m. with the Breakfast Club and ongoing activities in the Eiland area.
