The NorthSide Festival was founded in 2010 by Danish promoter Brian Nielsen in collaboration with German concert agency FKP Scorpio. The agency is also involved with the Hurricane Festival in Germany, the Hultsfred Festival in Sweden and the Southside Festival in Germany. It was decided to stylize the festival’s name as NorthSide to avoid confusion with the Northside Festival in new York City.
The inaugural festival was a one-day event that took place on June 19, 2010 at Tarkarogen, a public park in downtown Aarhus. The line-up featured five Danish bands (Veto, Selvmord, Mew, Turboweekend, and Nephew). The next year, NorthSide expanded to two days and featured acts from outside Denmark such as Band of Horses, Interpol, Elbow, White Lies, Suede. In 2013, the festival became a three-day event. Selling 25,000 tickets in total, it was completely sold out 2 weeks prior to the event.
The NorthSide Festival is a multi-genre music festival. Its program encompasses rock, alternative rock, pop, synthpop, hip-hop, indie, electronic dance music (EDM) and other musical styles and genres. Over the years it has hosted many notable acts including Kasabian, Snow Patrol, Arctic Monkeys, Garbage, Tegan and Sara, Gogol Bordello, Lana del Rey, Franz Ferdinand, The Chemical Brothers, FKA Twigs, Iggy Pop, Duran Duran, Yelawolf, Sigur Ros, Radiohead, and many others.
One of the festival’s core values is sustainability. The NorthSide Festival strives to promote and support the development of sustainability at large festivals. It has introduced waste sorting, doesn’t have a car parking to encourage attendees to walk, bike or take public transportation, holds various fundraisers, prefers organic and locally products, and prints all flyers and posters on environmentally-friendly stone paper.
Photo: Thorsten Iversen
