Inside the UK’s First Safe Listening Festival: HELA at ArcTanGent

Hearing protection is easy to forget about when you are looking forward to a festival. You think about the bands, the timetable and how quickly you can get between stages. Your ears tend to come into the picture afterwards, when you get back to your tent and realise they are ringing. At this year’s ArcTanGent, looking after them was part of the plan from the start.

ArcTanGent became the UK’s first Safe Listening Festival, working with researchers from the Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness to put the World Health Organization’s guidance for live events into practice. The work involved the HELA initiative, which stands for Healthy Ears, Limited Annoyance. HELA was developed with researchers at the University of Derby to help venues and events manage sound responsibly, protecting audiences and crews while also considering people who live nearby. That Derby connection made us particularly interested to see how the ideas translated to a festival we were attending.

There is more to it than handing somebody a pair of earplugs. The WHO’s safe listening standard covers sound level monitoring, the design of sound systems, access to hearing protection and quiet areas, and information for staff and audiences. At ArcTanGent, researchers worked with the festival on those measures and spoke to artists, technicians, staff and festivalgoers about how they worked in practice. It was a chance to test the approach during a real weekend of live music.

Earplugs were there when you needed them

The most obvious change for us was how easy it was to get earplugs. Free foam plugs were available at the bars and at every stage we visited. At the barriers, staff carried clearly labelled buckets up and down the front regularly. If you had forgotten your own protection, or decided halfway through a set that you wanted some, you could get a pair without leaving the crowd.

It reminded us of the way water is handed out at the front of a busy show. Putting earplugs into that routine made them feel like an ordinary thing to ask for. Information and posters inside the tents helped keep the message visible through the weekend. Higher-fidelity earplugs were also available to buy at the merchandise stand and the Metal For Good tent, giving people another option if they wanted a reusable pair.

That visibility matters at ArcTanGent. This is a festival where you might spend a whole day moving between intense, loud bands. Even for somebody who arrived intending to wear earplugs, it is easy to misplace a pair or leave them in the tent. Having replacements close to the stage made protection available at the moment somebody needed it.

What we heard, and the work we could not see

The less visible part of the programme was the sound itself. Sound teams were monitoring levels and looking at how the stage systems were set up. Instead of relying on more volume to compensate for quieter areas, the aim was to plan how sound reached the audience across each space. We could hear the result as festivalgoers: the performances still had the force we had come for, without volume feeling like the point of the exercise.

That does not mean every place in a crowd sounds identical, or that we could judge the monitoring from where we stood. It means the festival treated sound quality and hearing health as part of the same job. The music still felt powerful, which matters at an event built around heavy and experimental acts.

It also takes work from people audiences rarely notice. Engineers, production crews, venue staff and security all have a part to play when hearing protection is meant to be available throughout an event. HELA’s approach includes training as well as technical planning, and the researchers gathered feedback from the people working at ArcTanGent alongside the people watching. Those conversations should help establish which measures are useful and practical for other festivals to adopt.

What could make it better next time?

The biggest gap we noticed concerned children. We saw some close to the front without hearing protection, and free foam earplugs are not necessarily the easiest option for a child to fit. Properly sized over-ear defenders, available to borrow, would be a useful addition. A refundable deposit system, much like borrowing silent disco headphones, could make that possible without expecting families to buy a pair for one weekend. The fit would still need checking, and families would need to know where to collect them. NHS audiology advice recommends suitable hearing protection for children around loud music.

The free foam plugs could also come with clearer instructions. We saw people simply pushing them into their ears, which can leave much of the plug sticking out. The basic method is to roll the foam thin, pull the ear gently to help straighten the ear canal, then insert the plug and hold it while it expands. A small diagram on the buckets or beside the existing posters would be an easy way to show people how to get the protection they think they are wearing.

More information before the festival would help too. A reminder in ticket emails, on the website and in the festival app could tell people to bring suitable earplugs, point them towards the free ones and explain where families could find children’s protection. That applies well beyond ArcTanGent. Plenty of people still arrive at gigs without thinking about their hearing, and several days of exposure make those choices more significant. Quiet places away from the stages give people somewhere to take a break as well as somewhere to sit.

A strong start for safer live music

What impressed us at ArcTanGent was that the initiative had made it beyond the announcement. We saw earplugs at the bars, buckets moving along the barriers and information in the tents. Behind those visible details were sound planning, monitoring, training and research. There is room to improve, especially for children and for people using foam plugs for the first time, but the festival gave its audience practical ways to look after their hearing while enjoying the music.

We want to keep going to loud, brilliant shows for years to come. ArcTanGent showed how a festival can take that seriously and still sound like ArcTanGent.

Header Image from @snaprockandpop

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