The end of an era This is how the departure of Bjorn van der Veen as co-organizer of the Boerenrock festival in Drouwenermond can be safely seen. After fifteen years as chairman, he decided to pass on the baton to the current board at the end of last week. “You can only fill in your time once,” he describes with a smile.
When asked about the reason, he goes into more detail. “The festival is on the rise in terms of size, atmosphere and experience, but I have more besides the Boerenrock. I’m expanding my own company and have a busy job and a young family, then this just doesn’t fit anymore at,” he explains. “But man, what fantastic years we had.”
Boerenrock attracted almost fifty thousand visitors last year, but that is in stark contrast to the first edition in 2006. “We were in the pub with a group of friends that year and the former pub owner said he wanted to have a nice evening in the pub organize, but we couldn’t do it alone. Then we helped him a bit and that eventually led to a fun party evening with three hundred visitors,” Van der Veen remembers.
The party evening was such a success that all those involved wanted to organize another evening like this a year later. No sooner said than done, only a year later it was tackled just a little bigger. “For example, there had to be a party tent in the parking lot at the pub and we could accommodate a thousand people. Then we thought: if this works out, we can also organize the party on two evenings,” he says. “And so it got a little bigger every year.”