A raver spent £6k putting on a festival for 200 people in his parents' back garden - complete with a party bus and chocolate waterfall.
Jack Hodgson, 23, decided to throw "the mother of all festivals" to celebrate the end of the pandemic - after missing out on socialising with his friends due to Covid restrictions. He persuaded his parents - Rosie, 53, and Stewart Hodgson, 54 - to host the gathering in their two-and-a-half acre back garden at the family home in Darlington.
Jack and a team of mates set about throwing a party before the idea escalated and they started organising a one-day music festival - which they named 'Rush'. Jack started organising their first festival in January 2021 - with the main event taking place in August 2021.
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After the success of the festival, Jack said the plan is to hold the festival annually to see where it can go.
Jack, a video creator, said: "In lockdown, I didn't see my friends for a long time because my parents were deemed high risk as they both had a kidney transplant a few years ago. My mum, Rosie, gave my dad, Stewart, a kidney.
“We had some old stables at the bottom of the garden, I had friends round and we thought we could do something there. I wanted everyone to have a good time after Covid, it had been a pretty s*** time and the goal was for everyone to have the best time possible – we just went above and beyond.
"I am interested to see where the festival goes - this years festival was a massive upgrade from last year - every year we are going to push it to see where we can go."
The festival was due to be a one-time event - where Jack's friends could get together and celebrate - but he is now planning on hosting it annually. Jack was forced to postpone the event - which was due to take place in June 2021 - after Covid restrictions left him with just 21 days to plan the festival.
He was even in talks with the council to see if he could turn the festival into a ticketed event. However, it wasn't possible so he invited around 200 family and friends instead.
Jack changed the date of the festival to Saturday August 21, 2021 and let people come for free.
He said: “At the same time of getting the festival ready, we had to make sure it was safe. We tested everyone and we had to make sure nobody brought Covid into the festival and luckily nobody got it.
“We converted the rooms in the stables into different themes, when people saw what we did and the effort we had gone to it made everyone’s time better.”
The different themed rooms included a beach room, a volcano room and a jungle room. The festival also featured a party bus and a castle main stage. Jack said the festival is a group project between his friends and parents and that his neighbours were OK with him hosting a festival.
He said: "We told the neighbours and then a few weeks after we had a mini festival for the people of the village so they could enjoy the space, around 60-70 people came to that one too."
This year, Jack and his friends set themselves the challenge of getting the festival ready in 30 days. They started prepping for the festival on Sunday July 3 before it took place on August 6.
Jack said: “We started prepping little bits a few months prior to the festival taking place, we brought down the prime bus. We got the festival organised within 27 days, we started a little late but our minds were on it for two months.
“We got everything finished to the hour as people started arriving.”
Jack estimates that the festival costs around £6,000 to put together. He managed to secure a collaboration with record label After Hours who were DJing and sold t-shirts for £20 to cover the cost of the event - with 200 people turning up to let their hair down.
He said: “We made it as cheap as possible, for example, one of the rooms was a cave room. We used so much expanding foam to do it into a cave, we then used the cans from the foam in the space room.”
The festival is manmade by Jack, his friends and his parents using plywood, paint and dashboard panels, ivy, test tubes and materials left over from the festival in 2021.
Jack said: "This year we upgraded the old rooms, we turned the beach room into a cave, where you could look out onto the beach. We updated the jungle room with ivy, we put bark on the floor and we built a throne.
"The alien room we added dashboard panels, and test tubes to give it that UFO feel. The Prime Bus I created for YouTuber KSI got turned into a party bus, there were different challenges people had to do to win a can of prime.
"We also had a chocolate factory, inspired by Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. We fitted that with a pump and had a chocolate waterfall and a river."
He added: "This year was a massive upgrade from last year, every year we are going to push it to see where it can go. We don't want it to go mainstream like Glastonbury, we want to keep it exclusive and make it the best exclusive festival in the world."
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