Electromagnetic Field

Britain’s answer to Burning Man festival. But less sexy Californian dancers, more Wallace and Grommit inventors. Quintessentially British.

Electromagnetic Field Festival, also know as EMF, only runs once every two years. They stagger it with similar German and Dutch events in the other years.

Tickets sell out every time, in minutes.

The best way to get a ticket is to befriend someone who volunteers workinh at the festival as they get priority tickets.

My sister met her partner here. (Both geek software developers.) They have a daughter now, my niece. So you could say she is and EMF baby.

They have a swap shop where you can exchange your unwanted tech gear. In 2024 there was a small incident when someone donated a radioactive device. Luckily this being EMF festival a nuclear engineer was around who disposed of the offending item, avoiding a small scale nuclear incident. He came back in 2026 and gave a funny talk about it called 'The Orphan Source Incident'.

Meanwhile, at lunch in 2026 one of my camping village proudly showed us his radioactive glass marbles. So I guess we never learn.

I ate my lunch quickly and left that day. Being sure not to accidentally eat any radioactive marbles because that would be a bad thing.

On the other hand later there was a talk by a radioactive antiques collector called 'Spicy Antiques Roadshow: Uranium Glass and Radioactive Relics' who reckoned depleted uranium glass marbles are pretty safe.

Expect to see furries riding past on Sinclair C5’s and other things you don’t see every day.

Things get weird after dark at the infamous ‘null zone’. A dystopian Blade Runner style city block and nightclub.

Electromagnetic field festival is what the world would be like if it was run by software engineers.

There are, unusually for a festival hot showers for everyone. But at midday 19 July 2026 only 6 out of 24 were working. The rest had a bug.

The Berlin Wall (Section) is nearby, or for more fun in the countryside see The Hidden Tap.