Hmmmm, I haven't been to a festival in the US, but I've been to heaps of UK festivals, Vancouver FF and quite a few of the New Zealand North Island festivals. My main point is that one UK festival can be as different from another UK festival as it is from a US festival. Cambridge and Whitby are poles apart and neither is anything like Brampton or Cleckheaton or Saddleworth. In the UK we have village festivals which take over whole villages, there are predominantly "watchers" festivals like Cambridge with very little participation, there are festivals on single sites - like Brampton and I believe Warwick, and if you go to Ireland there are plenty of teaching festivals (like Meltown Mowbray (sp) etc - not UK I know, but worth a mention since it's a different festival type again). All of the festivals I go to in NZ are on single sites and involve much participation - possibly partly because we just can't afford many expensive guests and because the quality of our homegrown musicians is so good!!! ;-) Vancouver was totally a watchers festival when I went and probably isn't representative of most US festivals. It seemed to primarily involve parking a large blanket in front of the stage area and then b&$$£%ing off for the rest of the day until the one act you wanted to see.....

My favourites are the NZ ones, cos they're small and there's heaps of participation, but there are small festivals like that in the UK too - just haven't quite found out about them yet!! F