Deer Shed is a family festival, but it also isn’t.
The stereotypical family festival conjures up images of face painting stalls, magic shows and regular trips back to the tent so kids can get their hourly hit of Bluey in peace. While we all enjoy cosplaying up as Spider-Man, in its own words Deer Shed is a “cultural festival designed to be enjoyed by a wide audience” with a programme designed with families in mind but not catered to children.
One of the people behind Deer Shed Megan Evans, director and programmer of the Yorkshire-based weekender
Through Deer Shed, Megan is changing what a ‘family festival’ is and can be. At Deer Shed, teens are invited to experience the satirical, absurdist comedy of Stewart Lee while getting grazed knees in the roller disco. This year, the Deer Shed audience learn about the iconic career of George Michael or the indie music heritage of Sheffield on the literary stages while pinging their mates in the face in the dedicated Nerf gun arena. Deer Shed is a family festival in the way that indie dads play 6 Music in the living room hoping their kids inherit the same music tastes or how rave mums introduce Altern-8 to toddlers knowing they’ll have to wait a few years until their first proper communal dance. It’s about shared culture, whatever the age.
Megan joined the Deer Shed crew in 2011, one year after the festival’s founding. “I’ve basically spent half my life with Deer Shed,” she laughs.
To Megan, Deer Shed is a family affair in a couple of ways. There’s the colleagues she calls family who she’s ran the festival with for over a decade, and then there’s the literal family who provide the favours every festival needs. That includes her mum, who Megan says “basically acts as a production runner over the weekend.“
At its core, Deer Shed doesn’t believe that all young’uns want to see are balloon shows. Rather, it’s about providing expression and exploration for adults, teens and toddlers alike. In that, Deer Shed is rethinking what a ‘family’ festival can be.
“Line-ups are not meant to be comfortable,” says Megan. “Regardless of whether you like a band or not you can come away from a festival talking about a band. That’s the whole point of culture. You’re supposed to discover.
You have to recognise that what you’ll see will be more challenging but that your child is going to experience something amazing. It’s about putting art on stage, and it’s important for us to do that.“
This is not about forcing avant-garde comedy on to audiences. Rather, its about not being patronising to your audience, showing families that it’s OK if, in the case of 2026 headliners Sleaford Mods, parents can watch two middle-aged guys from Nottingham eff and blind on stage without needing to cover their child’s ears.
This ethos of multi-generational cultural appreciation has been there from the beginning. Started by husband and wife Kate Webster and Oliver Jones, the festival began like many other festivals do. You move to London, you move back to your original home to start a family, in this case Kate’s beloved Yorkshire, and then discover it doesn’t provide the same thrills you’ve become accustomed to in a 24/7 city.
Back in the ’00s, family areas were essentially penned in dog parks for those who dared to allow their kids to enjoy outdoor music. Kate and Oliver wanted to put their own spin on that, but introduce the music, comedy, arts and literature they had come to love.
16 years later, the landscape is different. Those who were newborns at Deer Shed’s first edition are now as excited for the new Fontaines D.C. record as their parents are. The chasm between ‘uncool’ parent music and the newest teen sensation anyone over 40 doesn’t understand isn’t there in the same way anymore, at least in the festival field.
“The bands, comedians and artists might be new to your family and they will potentially be new to your children, but for the adults it’s about rediscovery. If you’re a parent who gets to share that experience with your children, then that’s amazing,” says Megan. “God, I wish my parents would have taken me to a festival when I was younger.“
This shared experience seen in the field has encouraged Megan to keep making “unapologetic bookings” she says. In turn, this has helped Deer Shed steer away from major headline bookings being its major pull to a programme that is much broader and leftfield.
“There is a section of our audience who do wait for that headliner, but people invest in Deer Shed and trust everything on the line-up,“ says Megan. But younger generations are a difficult audience to understand and appeal to, at least for a festival booker. By the time parents have learned of the newest TikTok trend it’s already become desperately uncool, after all.
How do Deer Shed keep on the pulse of youth when it can all feel so abstract? “It’s about listening,” says Megan. “It’s about making sure that you’re talking to people to find out what they’re into and what they want. That can be a friend who has kids or an 18 year old at a gig. It’s always good to hear different perspectives from different age ranges, and don’t be afraid to ask outside of the industry.“
“For young people that’s the only way that you can keep a line-up fresh,” Megan goes on to say. “It’s the only way you can give them something that’s going to rock their world.“
With a festival such as Deer Shed, there have been some key decisions Megan and her team have had to make through its years to keep it alive.
The first, and probably most obvious, came through COVID. For teens, two or three years away from the world is an incredibly long time, and through those years spent at home instead of the field Deer Shed lost some of its core audience. “By the time things had normalised [after COVID], some of our audience had grown up. They were going elsewhere, they were doing different things,” says Megan. “There was a process of reintroducing Deer Shed back into their yearly calendars. We had to find our people again.“
Understandably, cost is very much another factor to Deer Shed’s longevity. Through that, they’ve learned not to be too precious in what they have and change things up. “We’ve had to reimagine the site to be able to make everything more cost effective,” Megan says. “We’ve done that more times than I can than I can remember. It’s about having to be adaptable to the financial pressures of the world while also never getting too comfortable. There are times to be cautious, but also to know when’s the right time to expand or change things.“
“Besides,” adds Megan. “Any promoter will say that if you thought you wanted to be a multi-millionaire, you wouldn’t do it through a festival.”
Deer Shed operate as a team of four for most parts of the year, and in such a close-knit team they have the luxury of versatility. That ability to adapt is part of its magic, but more than that this family affair behind the scenes resonates with its audience in the field.
“There’s a lot of our audience who are re-engaging with the music,” says Megan. “They’ve had children and they maybe haven’t had the experience of live music for a number of years. They’re experiencing live music again, and there’s an element of nostalgia to it you get to share with your kids. How cool is that?“
Deer Shed 2027 takes place 23-25 July 2027 at Baldersby park, north Yorkshire. Tickets are available now.
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