Diversity & Inclusivity

At Shambala, we work hard to make our festival as inclusive, welcoming and representative as possible. We’re proud of the community we’ve built together – but we know inclusion is never “finished.” It’s a journey that takes honesty, listening and consistent growth.

Explore the sections below to learn more about our diversity and inclusivity work – from how we’re improving representation across Shambala, to our Pay It Forwards: Share The Love initiative, which helps make the festival more accessible to those on low incomes through community donations.

You’ll also find links to related topics in the boxes below.

Listening and Learning

In 2021, we surveyed historically marginalised parts of our audience to better understand what we were doing well, where we needed to improve and how we could make the Shambala experience safer and more inclusive for all.
We focused on three key groups:

Shambalans from underrepresented ethnicities
Disabled, D/deaf and Neurodiverse Shambalans
LGBTQIA+ Shambalans

You can read a summary of that report here.

This feedback helped shape our ongoing Diversity & Inclusivity Action Plan, which aims to increase representation across our artists, crew, volunteers and audience – and to make sure everyone feels truly part of Shambala.

Representation and Data

We’ve been collecting data for several years on the ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability status and age of our crew, artists and audience. This helps us benchmark and track our progress.

In 2023, for example, 16.7% of our onsite crew identified as being from underrepresented ethnicities – close to the UK national average of 18%.

We’ve also been actively diversifying our core team, venue managers and onsite crews, and will continue to do so.

Respect, Education and Safer Spaces

We recognise that cultural appropriation can make spaces unsafe. To address this, we’ve developed strategy and guidance to avoid this and help to educate our audience on this topic – see here for more information

We’ve also spent several years working with our community to raise awareness of microaggressions – what they are, why they matter, and how to unlearn them. This information appears prominently in our printed programmes, the Shambala app, and our Essential Information Guides.

For information about on site safety and support, please visit our Safety page.

Support and Reporting

Whilst we have traditionally had very few reports of bad behaviour at the festival, we learnt from our work with audience focus groups that people have experienced micro-aggressions at Shambala, and that it can significantly affect their festival experience.

To respond effectively, we now have a dedicated onsite advocate – someone with lived experience – responsible for handling complaints or concerns related to racism, discrimination, harassment or microaggressions. This person can also support anyone who needs help in other situations, such as welfare or accessibility.

If you need to report an incident or speak to someone, you can do so through any of the following channels:

Speak to a steward, security team member or staff at your Campsite Hub (found in every campsite).
Visit the Public Info Point, Welfare or Medical Tent.
Call the 24-hour emergency hotline (details in the programme, app and Essential Guide).

Accessibility and Diverse Welfare Teams

We’re working closely with our medical and welfare provider to recruit more diverse teams – so that anyone needing help may find a team that reflects their background and lived experience.

Our Accessibility team is also is highly experienced and disabled led. For more details on accessibility facilities and support services, visit our Accessibility pages.

Language and Inclusivity in Practice

Following feedback from our trans and non-binary community in 2023, we made the decision to retire our previous Freedom Friday theme and replace it with something more inclusive. This change also gave us a chance to educate our audience about misgendering, pronouns and inclusive language, which we continue to highlight through our communications channels and printed festival programme.

Pay It Forward: Share The Love

In 2022, we piloted our Pay It Forwards: Share The Love scheme – inviting donations from our audience, crew and artists to fund full festival experiences (tickets, food, accommodation and travel) for people who’ve never been able to attend due to financial barriers.

Thanks to this initiative, in 2023 we welcomed:

Local young people who had previously been in care
Service users of a local community fridge food project

We’ve since scaled this initiative, partnering with Tickets For Good to offer full festival experiences to low-income individuals and families receiving Government Cost of Living Payments.