Sweet Dreams are made of These

This research investigates how festival campsite facilities create the complete festival experience for visitors who attend multiple-day music events. Academic studies about festivals primarily focus on performances and economic aspects and audience behaviours yet the campsite remains a poorly studied area. The research uses thematic analysis of ten Dutch festivalgoers' semi-structured interviews to reveal how the campsite serves as an essential social and affective space which defines the festival experience beyond mere sleeping accommodations. The research employs theoretical frameworks from Turner (liminality) and Foucault (heterotopia) and Turner (communitas) and Durkheim (collective effervescence) and Anderson and Böhme (atmosphere) and Bourdieu (distinction) to demonstrate how the campsite enables festivalgoers to break free from their daily routines while building deep social connections and participating in communal rituals of short-term communal living. The experience achieves its authentic quality through the reinterpretation of both uncomfortable conditions and practical difficulties which festival participants call "suffering." The festival campsite presents an enigmatic environment which unites brief periods of liberty and unity with refined social arrangements and organizational systems. The research adds new knowledge to festival and cultural studies through its analysis of the campsite as a place where experiences and identities and meanings emerge. The research demonstrates how short-lived disordered settings create deep communal bonds among people. The research findings provide useful information to event planners and spatial designers and scholars who study leisure activities and rituals and social patterns of modern cultural events.