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Radge Raving Crew:
Taking a Newcastle Dance Crew to Solfest
The Festival Idea
After a few months of building the Radge Raving Crew profile, we decided it would be brilliant to apply to appear as a dance walkabout act at a festival. Ali already had contacts at Solfest, so it seemed like the perfect event to approach, plus iit gave us a few months to prepare.
Luckily, the team at the Melodrame Stage got back to us quickly and said they would love to have us roaming the festival. Game on!
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Creating a Brand Awareness Campaign
With the festival confirmed, it was time to turn The Radge Raving Crew into a proper festival activation!
I designed social media graphics to promote the campaign and sourced bright colourful dungarees so we could print the logo on them. I also designed a huge feather flag so people across the fields could spot us instantly.
And the most fun part?
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Temporary tattoos!
Meanwhile, Ali put the call out across Newcastle and quickly gathered a brilliant crew of ravers ready to join the fun. We’d been given 15 festival tickets and decided we wanted to bring a mobile DJ setup so the crew could dance anywhere on site.
Luckily, I knew just the man.
My other half Nick is a DJ, so he curated a couple of sets while we built a mobile sound system on the back of a bike in our garden. A good friend lent us a trailer, another mate helped with sound engineering, and before long we had something pretty special ready to roll.
In early 2024 I started working with my client Ali on her idea to set up relaxed dance workshops in Newcastle. She had already run a few sessions in local venues and appeared at a couple of festivals, but she wanted to create a proper brand around it and give the whole thing a much more professional look.
She sent me the flyers she’d been using so I could get a feel for the colours and style she liked. Once we started working together and went through my onboarding process, I was able to get a much clearer picture of the vibe she wanted to create.
Creating the Name
One of the first things we tackled was the name.
We wanted something that reflected the local culture and Geordie slang that Ali, her friends and her audience all use. Something fun, a bit cheeky and very Newcastle.
That’s how The Radge Raving Crew was born.
Building the Brand
Ali wanted the brand to feel energetic and club-inspired, so I developed a neon sign concept for the logo and built the rest of the brand toolkit around that.
From there, the project expanded beyond just design. I travelled up to Newcastle several times to photograph workshops and meet the crew. While I was there, I also filmed video content for social media and recorded a few vox pop style interviews with the dancers about what makes the Radge Raving Crew so special.
As the brand started gaining momentum, we began thinking about how to take it further.
Festival Weekend
Before we knew it, August Bank Holiday weekend arrived and we were packing up the van and heading to Cumbria to meet Ali and the crew.
Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas.
A huge storm system was heading across the UK that weekend and the festival advised everyone not to arrive on the Thursday night as planned, asking people to come on Friday instead.
That decision meant everyone arrived at once.
In 28 years of going to festivals, I have never queued so long to get into one. We were stuck in the queue for three hours!
Once we finally got in, we got camp set up quickly while the rest of the crew got ready — pulling on their branded dungarees, covering themselves in glitter and applying the temporary tattoos.
Radge Raving Crew was officially ready.
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Let the Raving Begin
We set up the bike and mobile sound system and headed towards the entrance of the main arena to greet festival-goers as they arrived.
It didn’t take long before we had a crowd of people dancing with us. The energy was amazing and we spent the evening getting people excited for the weekend while telling them all about the Radge Raving Crew and Ali’s Newcastle dance workshops.
Saturday brought better weather, with sunshine and a bit of a breeze. We spent the afternoon roaming the site, meeting brilliant people from all over the UK, spreading the word and getting plenty of strangers dancing along with us.
When the Storm Hit...
Unfortunately the storm arrived in full force on Saturday night and the rain was torrential by Sunday.
That meant we couldn’t get the bike and trailer out again, but by that point we were confident we’d already made a big impression. We kept bumping into people around the site still wearing their Radge Raving Crew tattoos.
In fact, we even spotted someone still proudly wearing theirs the next day at the A1 services on the way home.
Safe to say the brand had travelled.
Spreading the Word
To top the weekend off, on the journey home we texted BBC 6 Music and managed to get a shout-out for Radge Raving Crew on air.
Not a bad way to end a festival.
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Planning a festival or creative event?
If you're organising a festival, community event or brand awareness campaign and want vibrant, personality-filled photography that captures the real atmosphere of the day, I'd love to hear from you.
From colourful costumes and big group moments to those spontaneous little bits of magic that happen when everyone relaxes and enjoys themselves — that's the good stuff.
You can explore more of my photography on my website or get in touch to chat about your event.
A Brand That Moves
What started as a simple idea for dance workshops quickly turned into a fully branded experience, complete with visuals, content, merch and a roaming dance crew spreading the joy across a festival field.
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And The Radge Raving Crew is only just getting started!
